It's not a bit though, it's a quarter of the picture, and that's a lot. I personally find it very hard not to notice. Especially being somewhat of an amatur film maker myself it makes me feel stronger about it and notice it more.
In the vast majority of cases it isn't a quarter of the picture!
How about a special two that has a birthday cake wih '40' on it. Or prehaps a '2' that morphs into the previous '2's.
The could just use classic old idents and stick the purple BBC symbol on it. Or simply the '2' that flips the logo around and have it flip it around again to reveal a '40' like it does for BBC 4.
In the vast majority of cases it isn't a quarter of the picture!
It doesn't really make much difference. However it's done, it's still a big chunk of picture chopped off and even if nothing imporant is cut off, it totally screws up the appearance and framing of the image.
If the BBC are reading this, I'd like to see a different one of their classic idents with announcer (or without) - the stripes, the "2", the revolving tri-colour 2 etc. at the start of EACH celebratory prgramme on that evening. Now that would be good...
Yep, that would be ideal. It could also be cool if they got some widescreen versions made too...