When did you first get interested in idents?

I got interested in idents a couple of years ago when I found a video clip of the old bbc globe (1991-1997). I then realised how fun seeing all the old idents, old news credits etc were. I only discovered all these brill websites a few months ago when I got the internet and since then I downloaded hundereds of idents, credits etc.

I've always been interested in news and current events, and TV presentation (in Canada anyway), but I've never actually been interested or actually cared about UK TV until March 2001.

I first got interested in this stuff when I followed a link from a website (TV Vancouver) to Round the Regions. The VERY VERY VERY first UK television presentation clip that I downloaded was the Newsroom South East titles. First time I saw it, I was gobsmacked. It was nothing like I've seen - music, graphics, animation, all great...

Then I found other sites like TV Home, TV Room, Sub TV, TV Ark, etc...

I still think the Newsroom Southeast titles are the best intros out of any I've seen - bar none.

Last Year, I accidentally stumbled across UK Television (Now TV Home), while I was looking for the BBC News website. I hated the website to start with (Sorry Asa), but I wrote the address down, and I have been a visitor every day to the site.

Rob.

I remember the old UKTV (I prefered it to TV Home's current look) it had a nice mix of yellow and blue, and the font for 'UKTV' was better than the Gil Sans that the current TV Home logo now adopts.

The old UKTV site used to use frames, and I was ever-so pleased when Asa got rid of them as they are a pain in the arse, and people visiting from search engines can't view the menu in the frame bar.

Well done on lasting 2 years with UKTV/TV Home Asa!!

I couldn't really put a precise date on it - I think I always found them interesting, though not always in an anoraky way - I only became that after discovering all the websites (though I did already have a modest collection of '2's, I'm not sure why, apart from my latent anorak tendencies, I think I intended to whip out the video in forty years time and bore generations as yet unborn with tales of how good television used to be in my day!).

I do remember being fascinated by things like the schools clocks and the BBC1 clock in the late 70s and early 80s. Also my dad used to watch a lot of Open Unversity programmes which had their own special ident (they should never have ditched the separate OU idents... in fact, now would be a great time to bring them back, considering how well they would fit in with BBC2's new colour scheme!). Considering that we watched very little ITV in our house during the 80s (we didn't really 'discover' ITV until the Radio Times started printing ITV and C4 schedules as well as BBC - we only got TV Times at christmas and for years both Radio Times and TV Times invariably had an ad for Butlins on the back cover) I do actually remember a surprising amount of the old presentation - like the old Southern compass rose and the start of TVS with its multicoloured shell - so what little I saw (mainly at friend's houses, I should imagine, though I do remember watching a few things like Rainbow and Jamie & The Magic Torch) at home, must have made a bigger impact on me than I realised.
There were other things like being ill (sadly the MMR vaccine has robbed today's kids of a lot of the pleasures of childhood illness) and having to stay at home and so getting to see the testcard and Pages From Ceefax and clocks at 1.47pm. Fantastic!

One thing I definitely remember that points to an interest in presentation was that I used to like drawing logos - I'm certainly not an artist, but they did capture my imagination. I remember drawing the double-line '2' logo on a Magna-Doodle - the way you cleared a Magna-Doodle was to bring a slider across, which wiped the screen starting at one side and ending at the other, so I used to draw the 2 logo and then wipe it and it looked like it was disappearing just like it did on TV. (I have since read websites which claim that it only did this at closedown, but I'm sure it must have done it before - some - programmes as well, because I wouldn't have seen a closedown, I'm sure).

I certainly remember changes, like the introduction of the COW and the white-background TWO and of course the change from Southern to TVS, and feeling sad that I'd never see the old logos again - though fortunately, now I've got web access, I *can* see them again after all!

I stumbled into collecting idents and presentation by accident really - I wanted a testcard to abuse for creative purposes, found it on MHP, read the rest of the site and ended up fascinated all over again. It's only in the last year or so that I've really started to collect old presentation, and I've been really lucky. I'm always buying old tapes at car boot sales and you never know what you're going to get but there's usually something that I haven't seen in years, or have never seen at all, or never even knew existed. Even when I've seen things on websites, there's nothing else that compares to seeing them on a proper TV, and it's always thrilling to see things like the 'You make it what it is' BBC promo campaign and old TVS programme slides again. I copy old idents and trailers onto separate tapes (as well as keeping the original source tapes) and I've just filled up my third volume, so that's 9 solid hours of pres I've gathered now... and after all these years I think I have finally joined the anorak club!

I got interested with idents thanks to Tyne Tees and Yorkshire ITV, in the late eighties, early nineties and it was interesting to see the two ITV compnies broadcasting, as they both had different styles of broadcasting, and they both adopted the 1989 generic look differently as well.

I started to take an interest in BBC logos from 1997 onwards really, but particularly since the BBC News revamp in 1998.

(Edited by harshy at 3:34 pm on Dec. 14, 2001)

since i saw www.thetvroom.com 2 months back

In September 1999 when in IT we had to create a coporate logo the first sites I went on where ABC TV (now TV50), 625, Television Ark (Now TV-Ark) & MHP, UK Television was a bit later in Janurary 1999& since then has grown fro strenght to strenght but I have also liked the LWT Blinds, Thames 1991, Channel 4 Bricks & BBC 1 1985 globe before I ever got to use the internet

I've been a news junkie since I was small (way back in the 70's). I had a teacher who had a lot of old radio jingles, and turned me on to Broadcasting Magazine (now Broadcasting & Cable), where I saw all sorts of ads for stations and images and all.

I spent summers in SW Ohio, and saw entierely different newscasts and heard all sorts of different music from the Chicago stations that I grew up with. Once online, I ran across several US-based music/jingle/presentation sites, and investigated further. Hence, here I am!

Thanks! Yeah, I had a soft spot for the old font and did toy with the idea of simply using the font again ('Big' as it is called for the 'UK' bit) in the old UKTV Network style box but ended up finding Zombie.

Looking back, it was certainly a very bright design!! Shame web.archive.org doesn't bring up anything really.

Bonus point to anyone who knows where the UKTV coloured backgrounds came from

As to when my interest start - Well it started when I was really young being plonked down in front of my cartoon video with things like the Thames ident. I also had a tape called 'Signs 2' (god knows what happened to Signs 1)! Signs was the name I now know as idents. Sadly the tape was wiped several years ago. I bet there was some quite good stuff on there now, looking back.

As to looking on the net - MHP was my first stop on my school's system via a search engine. Things like the Diana death page sent a shiver down me! And then when I wanted to create a website, I wanted one to be unique, high-quality, quick and easy to update (ha ha!) and not require to much writing I thought I'd be using too much of MHP's Private Parts to upload bits and pieces so decided to do a bit of a blatant equivalent...as you'll see from the screenshot!

Cheers, Asa

what was the old URL again asa

why not bring back the blue and yellow asa...

a nice new look for 2002