BBC Oneness - idents and presentation

Having a slide scanner and having one of sufficient quality to originate a test card are entirely different matters, I would suggest

You can see the somewhat Heath Robinson arrangement BBC Manchester used to use in the old-old regional News studio, at Piccadilly, at about 1m15 into this - basically a couple of projectors and a screen in a dark box that they pointed a studio camera at.

I can't find any examples of the locally-generated testcard in my archive. I don't have that many recordings of these junctions - from what I can see. Menus of lengthy duration are what I'm finding. I can't believe that a testcard had to be resorted to in 2008. Even if I had to fill an hour - due to lack of Ceefax generator - my personal choice would've been the menu + music. The testcard has no place in modern broadcasting (other than internal use of course). Just my opinion.



My earliest memories of local continuity are from the late-70s and I can't recall the use of a slide scanner from then until the mid-80s. Do any of your colleagues happen to know if one was available for use at any point prior to the late-70s - and was perhaps taken out of use due to bomb damage?

Well,,,,

https://youtu.be/ca5RRaxmEgY?t=870

My own personal recollections - which go back to the late-70s - are that we had local continuity at weekends, post 5pm on BBC One NI. As mentioned previously, weekdays, local continuity began after the afternoon children's programmes. BBC Two was always network continuity - bar regional opts - until 1999, when BBC NI decided to start covering most of the day with local continuity.

There was a very peculiar period - c. mid-1990s - when regional opts on BBC Two used network-branded idents. No idea what the reasoning behind this was. This lasted less than a year, if I recall correctly.

For a year or so - sometime around 1987 = BBC NI adopted the same nonsense practice of BBC Wales and BBC Scotland of referring to BBC One verbally as "BBC Northern Ireland". It really was a total nonsense. You had this bizarre situation where everything on screen was branded 'BBC1 Northern Ireland' yet you'd have situations such as:

"Over on BBC2 now <X>. Here on BBC Northern Ireland in half an hour <y>. Now on BBC Northern Ireland <x>."

BBC One NI local continuity spread to daytime c. 1988. But even then, I think it only kicked in around lunchtime. It'd be a while longer before local morning continuity became the norm.

I seem to remember it being "BBC Scotland on One" (and Two) - can't recall if that was COW era or laserdisc, though.

I think it was both in terms of the announcements, but the symbols themselves were identical to the network ones except with the nation name added.

The stripey incarnation of the mirror globe omitted the 1, so it was literally BBC Scotland and BBC Wales, but the Futura one was BBC1. NI kept BBC1 branding on their stripey one as shown a few posts back.

For a good number of years prior to the "BBC Scotland on One" verbal branding, they referred to it as "BBC Scotland".

From September 1981 - February 1985, BBC Scotland had three versions of the green and blue globe: one with the legend 'BBC 1 Scotland', which lasted from September 1981 to 1983; another which simply had the '1' removed and the justification of 'Scotland' adjusted accordingly - this was used until September 1984. The third ident had a stylised 'BBC Scotland' logo which was used for the last few months of this period.

ah, apparently I don't remember that era because I'm a bit too young

I remember after BBC Choice NI closed on the 2000s and BBC Two had more regional opt-outs on digital platforms than analogue. Regional continuity was called "BBC Two Northern Ireland" but they used network-branded "BBC TWO" idents. Only in the evening, and only on digital platforms did we get "BBC TWO NI" branded idents with NI pronounced as letters rather than "Northern Ireland"

Images from TV Ark, via Wayback Machine:

You do know There in tv room without needing a way back machine....