Regional Names

Umm, Spotlight, Newsline? They don't incorporate the name of their region at all (being South West and Northern Ireland respectively).


Digitally Originated Graphic - it's basically just a fancy name for the channel name which permanently appears on the screen.


Ident is a shorthand way of saying 'Channel Identity'. It refers to what are commonly known as 'logos' (even though logo means something else). Basically, the piece before the programme which the announcer talks over.


Colour Separation Overlay (also known as Chromakey). The technology which allows a particular colour to be replaced by some other video source. This is commonly used on news sets to superimpose a particular background onscreen to pretend that they are broadcast from a different set than that which they actually are.

The track is called Forever and a Day by State One. There are two mixes: vocal and Vox Off, which contains no vocals. Very good song in its own right as well.



You can't cop out of it that easily! I thought it was On-Screen (and that's what I reckon it is) until I was reliably informed it stood for Orientated.

The way I see it (I'm not claiming this is the industry standard or anything) is that a DOG is a permanent channel identifie, such as the BBC News 24 logo in the corner. A bug is a semi-permanent graphic such as the "Live" bug.

And then of course there's DINGOs...

Well, that's not quite correct - certainly most of the BBC English Regions are still operating in the analogue world apart from the mocked-up 14:9PB output to the digital transmission chain. There may be the odd Aston 'Caption' still in use somewhere.

It's my understanding that DOG does actually stand for Digitally Originated Graphic, but really it's not the name but the definition that's the issue. A graphic is generally something inserted into programme or presentation material in a studio gallery or pres. suite, wheras a DOG is downstream in the main transmission chain, although it may be activated from a pres suite.

Back in the days of national opt-outs on BBC Choice, we had a Choice Wales DOG which remained in the transmission chain even if the suite was out of circuit to network - the network was clean because the feed was upstream of the their bug-box.

I've always supposed that it got it's name because we first started seeing them proliferate on digital channels, but it would be perfectly possible to generate a DOG from an analogue box and insert it into an analogue transmission chain - although God knows why anyone would want to!

Sometimes BBC Scotland use BBC Alba to introduce the Gaelic programmes.

So Astons aren't digital then?
What do they do, print ink onto transparent film or something?

On-screen is the best fit.

The verb Orientate isn't really applicable in terms of graphics

What the heck does BUG stand for then?

No, Aston 'Captions' and other caption generators of their ilk are analogue. Obviously there's a digital processor involved in crunching the data, but in television terms we generally only consider a piece of kit to be digital if it works entirely in the digital domain. These machines output in RGB to the monitoring matrix and composite to the router, whereas the newer digital CGs like Aston 'Green' for instance, have a digital output which can go straight onto a digital router. It has to got through a D to A converter before you can view it on a conventional preview monitor.

An analogue telly manages to put a picture on the screen without using film or ink.... well it does down here, perhaps they're different in London!

Points West was on air way before Nationwide came along ...

The "LDN" name is frankly a bit of a mystery. No-one to my knowledge has satisfactorily explained why the people at Marylebone High Street think we cannot cope with "London" as the region's name. The London region seems to change the names of it's local services every so often for not much reason:

Take the local radio service. It was originally BBC Radio London , then became BBC Greater London Radio, then BBC GLR, then BBC LDN (and was it also called London Live for a while ?) Now it's referred to as BBC London 94.9.

For television, the programme is referred to as BBC London News, but the graphics and ident before the progamme are branded BBC LDN, unless you're watching the BBC ONE "England" DSAT feed, where a non-regional ident is used !

All in all a bit of a mess.

BUG stands for nothing, it's just "bug" in terms of something small sitting in the corner. People tend to write it in capitals to look nice and fit comfortably with DOG.

It should be Look North East and (most of) Cumbria.