DOGS

Talking about TV-AM, it never fails to amaze how ropey the main ident was, it looks like a picture done in felt tips, cut out and glued to a board. Meanwhile stuff like the Daybreak intro also shown in the above video, were able to use much more superior computer generated titles.

The Daybreak titles are really poor CGI though, really low frame rate, and a horrible cut to the high res logo at the end.

Well poor by modern standards maybe, much less so in 1983!

It would be hard to believe there wasn't one. After all, both BBC1 and 2 had been using an electronically generated full-screen clock for a couple of years by that time, and Channel 4 had one too, so being able to generate one to put in the corner of the screen would hardly have been much of an issue.

I'm sure there would have been, and as for the Tvam clock being 'last minute' ( no pun intended) it was probably a last minute late delivery from the manufacturer!

It depends what you mean by 'available'. Yes it was certainly possible technologically, but that doesn't mean it was available at the sort of notice that TVam had. The BBCs on screen clocks including the BAT used at breakfast were designed and created in-house in their massive R&D department, they weren't bought off the shelf or knocked up in a couple of weeks.


No idea about channel 4's, it might not have been digital at the start but if it was then I'd have thought that would have gone through a similar design process at the IBAs engineering dept.

The main ident you can probably excuse as it was a watercolour effect.


Remember though that's what television looked like in 1983: cameras pointing at card, handing drawn and cut graphics, cell animation, letraset captions etc. TVam looked modern then compared with what most viewers saw the rest of the day on ITV!

Mind you, when you compare the last days of the outgoing stations in 1981 and the first day of their replacements they all look a world apart from each other

I'm sitting in a waiting room of a big office block and literally peeing myself laughing at the initial indignation and seriousness with which this thread started.

Thank you TVF for brightening up an otherwise difficult day.

As things turned out the Daybreak titles were the least of the station's worries but the theme was later reused for the Frost on Sunday segment.

Suppose the more unusual aspect in the grand scale of things was just how long TV-am held onto the watercolours and used the GMB titles for. By the late 80s they were beginning to look dated and was pretty much anachronistic by 1992. While other aspects of the presentation were revised over the years and various strands had their own titles, I was always of the impression the look of the main programme presentation wise in retrospect always looked stuck in the 80s.

I suppose its plausible the entire operation was ripe for a major rebrand after 1992 had the channel survived, and Tele Matin today shows an analogue clock doesn't have to take up an obscene amount of screen space either.

C4's clock was produced by a GEC McMicheal crate, from the outset in Nov 82,

Not sure they were created by BBC Research. Most hardware was created either by Designs Department or Studio Capital Projects Dept AUI - which were very separate. R&D were very much the blue-sky thinkers. If they did develop hardware to be actually deployed, it then went elsewhere to be engineered into a product and manufactured.

This has some information on the GNAT which was used by the BBC towards the end of the life of on-screen pres clocks in the UK http://www.bbceng.info/Designs/designs_reminiscences/richard_russell_part2/rtrbbc.html

This details the earlier, c1979, BBC Two electronic clock http://www.bbceng.info/Designs/designs_reminiscences/Richard_Russell/rtrdd.html

Both made by Designs Dept. not Research Dept.

Thanks for that, I was just using that as a generic term.