A quick question over dates on endboards

No one has mentioned the TV-AM eggcups, they added a new egg cup with the year written on it to their endboard each year. They would have 28 of them by now. How were the eggcups done? Were they real or early computer graphics? Did TV-AM, knowing how long their franchise period was for, create all the endboards at once or did they make a new one each year?

Am I right in thinking that the only programmes that were given new credits, new endcaps etc on ITV are those which had large exposure in prime time or possibly during daytimes on ITV1 at some point. Programmes which have gone straight to ITV3 would not have all this extra work done to them?

Personally I think they should leave the old endcaps intact, maybe adding a second one if they need to clarify who actually owns the rights in 2010. You often see this on various lowbrow digital channels where a distribution company adds their own endcap at the end.

They should definally leave the old date on, unless there has been any new content added.

I know with a lot of Thames work, Frontcap is kept but the end cap is changed to Flemantle media

Wouldn't really be a lot of point making a load of eggcup end-caps "just in case", considering the company was losing money hand-over-foot in the early years and the handling of the Brighton Hotel Bombings in 1984 bought them so close to being effectively taken off the air.

Mind you, wouldn't have made much difference if it continued to run after 1992, would have probably still been bought out by ITV then replaced by something entirely different. On that basis I think they'd have changed the endcaps long before the issue of how to present 28 eggcups on a screen would have been pondered. They ended up with 12 eggcups on the roof from the outset.

I'm almost certain the eggs as presented on the endcaps were digital. There's a lovely picture here of the back of the MTV Studios, the old TV-AM home, apparently the eggs look better from the front than they do from the back:
http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/16625777.jpg

It would likely just be as simple as a graphic designer making up a new one at the end of every year. When I worked on a live daily news programme it was always a bit of a last minute thing that someone remembered to do around the 28th December!

I doubt they would have done the whole lot in advance because they wouldn't have known how far the idea would continue. Of course it might not even have been the intention to add to the first one at the start.

I think Flemantle are based in Belgium

That's true for some programme areas. However for those that don't have a staff graphic designer or caption op, it isn't uncommon for the design company supplying graphics to provide a good few years worth of end boards with each copyright year on them. (4 or 5 years, and a blank in case of a logo change, is usual)

TV-am was an interesting case, because it wasn't just a copyright year change, they actually increased the number of eggs in the eggcups each year - though TV-am will have had in-house graphic designers.

Depends sometimes, the old mirror ident & end caps seem to appear unscathed although are followed by the Pearson Televsion or Fremantle Media cap afterwards. However anything with the Triangle logo I don't fully know as I don't think anything of that era has been released.

Actually tell a lie, Minder Series 8 was release with the mirror ident on the front even though it had long been disused by 1991 but there was no triangle caption on the end just a cut to black.

When I was down there lately, I noticed the left-hand side of the building has had a bit of a spruce-up, and its eggcups painted in a rather sombre two-tone grey colour scheme. (They've also got pigeon spikes now, to prevent them becoming quite so mucky again)

According to a friend who works at MTV, the egg-cups aren't particularly popular there. Apparently they tried to get rid of them, but they're actually listed, so all they can do is hope they fall off of their own accord, which apparently is slowly happening, one by one.

I thought they were listed, but I've been unable to get the English Heritage site to confirm that*. Surely if they were listed, there'd be a duty of care for the landlord to maintain them - and restore them, if they fell off?

* or Camden Council's site, but rather old BBC News article says yes.

I'm surprised they didn't lose a few in that big fire they had a few years ago.

I'm pretty sure that the big 'TVam' logos at either side of the frontage can't be removed either, hence they were covered up rather than removed