Popular Programmes in 2000

It was quite common initially - This Morning is a noteable example, whilst Advertiser Funded, rather than sponsored, shows continued the practice with shows like Orange Playlist. I certainly prefer it to the current arrangements allowing stars of the show to be in the sponsor bumpers, though BGT do it quite well by just using voices.

Apart from the usual football stuff on Sky like Renault Super Sunday and Gillette Soccer Saturday.

There's one more example I can recall, which I've posted about before. Surprise Surprise from the mid-nineties included BT sponsorship logos during the titles, with phone calls/connections the whole theme of the titles. The only video I can find is here.

A simple bumper around the programme is obviously much easier. Don't need to worry about new titles when you change sponsor, or repeats of your DIY show end up on some obscure digital channel at a later date.

Since 623058 isn't around anymore to link to threads of days gone by, I will on this occasion provide a link:
https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/sponsorship-tv-programmes-41874/

Building sponsor bumpers into titles was quite common in the mid 1990s, here's Wish You Were Here from 1993:


And Play Your Cards Right in 1994 (Challenge have aired these and had to cut round the sponsor bumpers, you can still hear the music edits today):


Millionaire was the other example (example and a half that as Challenge had to remake the credits and hack away at the titles too).

I believe it is some user who was banned off this site but knows the clips will be embedded here so makes the thumbnails look stupid on purpose. There are also several thumbnails on the channel referencing the users of this site.

There were loads of titles which included the sponsor in the mid to late 90s.

Talking Telephone Number's titles basically considered of the Daily Mirror logo flying around the screen.




Although this is my favourite example (and I challenge anyone to find a set of titles more 90s S4C than this):

The biggest thing TV wise from a presentation point of view happened on 20th June 2000 in which there was a massive power failure at BBC TV Centre, the biggest casualty was BBC News 24 which was rendered useless for around 16 hours. Normal service didn't resume until 9am the following morning.

Here's some footage from BBC One.

IIRC the 2000 power failure meant the London news opt out didn't go ahead and they had to air something else (London was the sustaining feed I believe or the default if you didn't or couldn't opt out for any reason). Meanwhile all the regional opt-outs went ahead as normal and didn't have a choice but to crash back into this filler programme, I think it was an episode of Dad's Army.

I can’t remember much about the schedule back then - was it something like 6pm News, 6.30 Regional News Magazine, c 6.57 Weather? Why would regions need to crash into the filler if it was merely replacing the London news (unless it ran longer than the regional news would have done?). Maybe the schedule was non-standard anyway due to Euro 2000, which the announcer mentions is starting earlier than billed? Couldn’t BBC One London have shown the UK Today special that went out on BBC One HD?

The Chart Show had the sponsorship logos integrated into the titles too. In fact the 1994-96 titles have Twix logos everywhere, to the point you probably wouldn't be able to cut them out if those episodes had ever been repeated.

The first series of the 90s version of Play Your Cards right had the News Of The World sponsorship integrated too, which is why the titles seem to begin to abruptly when Challenge repeat that series.

One series of GamesMaster had the McDonald's M morphing into the GamesMaster M as well. I beleive that was the series Dominic Diamond didn't present, due to not agreeing with McDonald's sponsoring.

Why couldn't Challenge just splice in the titles from a later season of Play Your Cards Right? The show never changed it's logo, they just updated the titles to remove the sponsorship.

As pointed out in all these examples, sponsors imbedded in the titles was mostly a mid 90s thing, in the early days of sponsorship rather than a 2000 thing.

Therefore the Better Homes example stands out as being unusual. I’m guessing they were more than a sponsor and funded the whole show?