The balloon definitely needs to come back. It’s iconic! If it wasn’t for that Lorraine (Hennessy Whiskey), we’d have a better logo. It was so distracting looking at old VHS archives.
The balloon was a great ident- for its time. Yes, it could have been kept on screen another year or two, and yes it was significantly better than Oneness.
But the balloon won't come back. And nor
should
it come back. Resurrecting old idents for a short time (eg channel anniversaries, retro programme strands) is all well and good, but they quickly become stale- just look at what happened with BBC Two, recently re-showing their old 90s idents for the best part of four years.
BBC One can certainly do better than Oneness. But reviving an old ident is not the answer.