Is The South Bank Show the only programme remaining on UK television that still uses ‘End of Part One’ and ‘Part Two’ captions? It seems to have fallen out of usage in recent years. When James Martin’s ITV Saturday morning show started it had them, but it appears to have dropped them now too.
Taskmaster probably does it for some nostalgic ironic affect.
I guess there are a few reasons they don’t do it anymore. They probably don’t want to highlight how many commercial breaks there are in an hour. It probably makes it easier for international sales where breaks may be in different places. Future repeats where they may add in more breaks if allowed at the time. On demand too where there aren’t always breaks at all the same times.
I remember shows like the Brookside Omnibus, where you’d get the likes of ‘End of Part Four’, ‘Part Five’ etc.
As said above, it’d just highlight how many parts there has been, specially when many shows are now at least an hour long, and many entertainment shows are up to two hours long.
Some game shows which began in the eighties have never used these captions - Play Your Cards Right, Catchphrase and Fifteen to One spring to mind.
Countdown used them until September 2001, when the Teatime Teasers were introduced along with the 15-round format. Family Fortunes, meanwhile, used a "Back Soon" caption at the end of part one for much of the Les Dennis era.
Channel 5's early programmes had them in the top left of the screen next to the DOG in the colour stripe design of the time - was that part of the programme itself or played out by presentation?
Channel 5's early programmes had them in the top left of the screen next to the DOG in the colour stripe design of the time - was that part of the programme itself or played out by presentation?
Presentation because none of that appeared when 100%, Whittle and whatever else turned up on Challenge, they had to make their own end of and beginning of part bumpers (usually a title card).
In fact when they toned the brightness of the DOG down a couple of weeks after launch it brightened up again for the End of Part strap so it could only be presentation that was generating it.
I liked the C5 candy-striped break markers. Wonder why some programmes made use of them while others did not.
Whittle and 100% did, but Family Affairs had their own and 5News never used it either.
As above, some of the programmes themselves didn't use them. The markers were generated by presentation. Suppose it could be argued it saved money as the production didn't have to generate a bumper but how much that would save is anybody's guess. To be honest I don't think it lasted longer than 18 months if that before they went back to the traditional end-of-part method. Presumably it was a late decision for Family Affairs to have its own bumpers?
I'm thinking now that the reason The South Bank Show uses these captions is probably just because Melvyn Bragg still likes to use them. Silent, white on black 'End of Part One', with no 'Coming Up…'. It's pleasantly old-fashioned.