Presentation copied around the world

I was interested to see the videos posted in the Local TV thread of New Zealand local news using title sequences based on the ITV regional news look of 2004. This got me wondering if there are many more examples of presentation elements being copied or borrowed around the world.

The example which springs to mind is BBC Breakfast Time's titles from 1986 which were clearly inspired by those of the CBS Morning News in America...


(titles from 33 seconds in)

Whilst I'm sure most instances of copied pres are above board and with the blessing and maybe even co-operation of the parties involved, there have been some slightly more dubious examples.

I remember Alpha TV in Greece had to withdraw an ident in the 90s as they'd simply copied BBC2's Blade ident, but using Alpha's A logo. The video was on TV Ark, but I can't find it anywhere else now.

Also, and not from a TV company, but the American telecoms company, Bandwidth, changed their logo after facing accusations of plagiarising ITV with this logo...



(Article via Wayback Machine)

So, does anyone know of other examples of borrowed, copied or re-used pres?

TVNZ2's logo was akin to that of the iconic '2' used by BBC Two until they carried out a rebrand in 2016.

That was me when I lived out in Greece. I posted it on my Greek TV Idents website and it was picked up by Broadcast magazine. I've still got a scan of the page at home. I received a legal take down notice from Alpha TV to remove the video and all images from the site very shortly after.

They actual did two versions, the most similar was Blade with a dropping 'A', the other was BBC Two like, but not an exact match AFAICR. I'll have to dig it out when I get home.

They also ripped off Channel 5's five-colour stripe used in promos and breakflashes at the time.

Both of them are pre-dated by this:



Which is actually more similar to the CBS version.

Here in Brazil, SBT is guilty of that in more ways than one.

In 2005, when SBT reinstated a full-fledged news operation (between the shutdown of CBS Telenoticias, in 2000, and 2005, SBT had a small news team and relied mostly on wire services and content from caught-on-camera shows such as "Real TV" as filler), their then-new flagship newscast, SBT Brasil, was heavily modeled after ABC World News Tonight at the time:


Some of their promos were designed to resemble those from US networks, such as CBS...



Univision...



and even the WNBC (NBC owned-and-operated station in New York City) news opens:




And these are just a few examples. Maybe I'll show a few more in the future.

Those bits about Alpha back in November 2000. Sorry for the small screen-caps, but that's how it was done 17 years ago!



http://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_1.jpghttp://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_2.jpghttp://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_3.jpg

https://theident.gallery/misc/misc/ALPHA_ID_01_1.mpg

http://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_4.jpghttp://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_5.jpghttp://www.greektvidents.com/ALPHA_Media/ALPHA_ID_01_6.jpg

https://theident.gallery/misc/misc/ALPHA_ID_01_2.mpg

The Aussie networks are notorious for copying the American networks - news themes, station slogans and taglines, presentation etc - see this example from the 80s:

NBC Monday Night Movies:



Channel Seven Sunday Night Movies:

ABC in the US had a musical promotional campaign called 'We're the One', with later versions called 'Still the One', which was copied/licenced by Sky here in the UK and Nine Network in Australia, the latter using the basic song well into the noughties.

The original BSB Movie Channel ident also seemed to be a copy of the NBC Movies ident..

As is the case with several of these clips, it wasn't really a "copy" (if that implies a rip-off), but simply an instance of the same template being used by the same graphics company (Novocom, in this case) for clients in different countries.

The same opening sequence was also used in Australia:



And, in a slightly modified form, in France (on the defunct La Cinq):

That's not the BSB Movie Channel ident, it's the first Sky one.



Didn't Granada's local news once use a US design?

Indeed. At around the turn of the century, Granada used a design based on the one used by Hearst TV stations in the U.S., specifically WCVB in Boston (whose logo, interestingly, resembles Granada's).

Granada:



WCVB: