Hat Trick endcap typo

Why did they use Roman numerals in the first place?

Roman Numerals were used by the BBC (especially) to confuse the public so they wouldnt be able to tell how old the repeats they were broadcasting. They flashed them up so quick that it wasnt possible to accuratly work out what the date was. This is also the reason why BBC opted for the longer version of 1999 whereas ITV opted for MIM!

If only we could sue them under the Trade Descriptions Act or something . . . !

[quote="ohwhatanight"]

Ever Roman Numeraled ITV show I've seen that was made in 1999 was copyrighted MCMXCIX

Yep, Arabic numerals. The ITV generic credit rules specifically forbid anything else.

My little niggle is why in many countries (although not generally in the UK I've noticed) so many credits have '(C)Copyright........'. Why use the copyright symbol AND list the word? It's very odd.


I disagree. I hated the old italic BBC font. It was illegible as hell. Gil Sans is, to my mind, a 'nice and clear' font.


Many broadcasters made reference to Stereo either in the announcement, on the ident, or on the first few seconds of the programme (I remember TSW used to have an awful opaque blue 'NICAM Digital Stereo' DOG which they displayed at the start of stereo programmes).

What I did find interesting though is that, as was said, widescreen has been relatively neglected. We had years of 'Colour Production' (right until 1989 for some broadcasters), and as I just said we had 'Stereo' indicators. But afaik there has never been any on screen notification that something is in widescreen. It's like they just wanted to make out that widescreen is how it's always been and 4:3 never existed.

Seems the only mention of widescreen on the BBC channels was in the early days of the split transmission areas and more often than not you'd get an announcement telling you what's coming next followed by "You're watching BBC1...in widrescreen" or sometimes just something simpler like "Eastenders....in widescreen."

It didn't last *THAT* long and was never heard again when it came round to the same transmission being used for both analogue and digital - before that you could sometimes hear an announcement over the credits on digital trailing what was over on BBC Choice, but the analogue credits would remain clean. Nice idea - and meant digital services could be promoted where it was most effective (ie the people that have got them!!)

But it was then decided that telling the analogue viewers what they were missing would encourage them to get digital.

Will all the (vile IMO) cropporama going off at the moment, it seems that's exactally what they want us to think.

There is a major diffrence with widescreen though.

With colour and stereo it's not obvious to viewers with B&W or mono sets..... it makes no diffrence to their service so it needs flagging

When a programme is broadcast in widescreen it is normally quite obvious to analogue 4:3 viewers.

In these days of 14:9 letterbox transmission on analogue maybe. But, I disagree that it's not obvious.

In the early days, many things were made in widescreen but with 4:3 protection (Brookside has been since at least 1995), and transmitted this way on analogue. It was not obvious that they were widescreen.

Aswell as that, many digital viewers have their boxes set to display in 4:3 centre cut mode. And to many people it's not immediately obvious that they are watching a widescreen programme.

Unless someone's head gets sliced in two between the eyes or a non-narrative voice has no body!

One of the problems with the early days of widescreen and 14:9 letterboxing my mum used to think the telly was on the blink because of the black bands on the top and bottom of each programme. She didn't realise that the programme was widescreen until I told her, and she took some persuading.