Ski Sunday

Hello people, although I have browsed the forums before this is my first post and I'm looking forward to posting a little bit more.

I am a student at Brunel University - studying Multimedia Design and Technology getting ready to return for my last year of study and indeed my final year project.

From areas of research and study I have concluded I would like it to involve Design for television and branding. In particular I would like to re-brand BBC's Ski Sunday (Title Sequence, Astons, VT menus etc.) but would like some opinions of doing so.

I have a few reasons for doing so, perhaps the main one is that I am an avid young (21) skier myself who enjoys watching winter events, however have never really liked or sought to watch Ski Sunday - I find it is very middle aged. I think there is a big market in terms of skiing, bording and freestyle events for a wider audience, but it is not reflected by the style of the show.

I can relate this to the style of Top Gear 10 years ago to what we see today - not that I intend to be as drastic but I feel that the show doesn't capture the interests of viewers it perhaps should. We saw the attention border-cross got this year during the Winter Olympics, it was watched by many of my friends, if I asked the same group the last time they watched Ski Sunday they couldn't tell me the last year they watched it.

So if people could give me some feedback for what they think it would be very useful. Thank you.

I do have some television background as I did a bit of graphics work for Grandstand and the Winter Olympics last year so technical suggestions would also be helpful. Also I do realise that BBC has its own branding which I fear I will have to break due to the restrictions they will place on the design side of my project (if I decide to go ahead) as I would need to create a total design rebrand to gain full credits for my work. I would designing it as a separate (stand-alone) programme away from the BBC Sport brand guidelines, and the outcome will never be commercially used.

I'll also put my ideas on the mock forum for feedback etc should I decided to go ahead.

Thanks guys for your help. Rob

As much as the imminent ending of Grandstand worries me, Ski Sunday did work better a decade ago when it was a standalone programme in the schedules in the days before Sunday Grandstand.

It seems very much an after thought at the moment!


I agree with much of what your saying - they've kind of got to make each episode like a mini Winter Olympics.

Graham Bell skiing down the course really doesn't give the viewers too much information - once you've seen him ski one course, you've seen him do the lot! It's the personalities they've got to concentrate on to get the casual viewers in - if you don't care about the athletes, there is little point in watching!



It's not going to happen with the BBC wanting to kill off their biggest sporting brand, but personally I think replacing the Sunday edition with "Winter Grandstand" would be a good place to start.

Of course, most of the time he did that at the downhill course in Torino for the 2006 Olympics, he managed to film 30% downhill looking at the rest the course and 70% looking back uphill up at his face - the muppet.

To help out uni friend, a couple of thoughts, which of course he is free to take on board or reject..

1 - Skiing coverage is branded to the hilt by the various EBU host event broadcasters using the same FIS world feed graphics. If you are going to choose Skiing, i'd angle any designs to incorporate these graphics, with a localised 'twist', and work with them rather than against them.

2- Failing that, what about designing the graphics for the cricket coverage next year in your work?
It's a clean slate as far as the BBC are concerned, so any designs will be your idea, rather than having a current influence lurking around in the background. And what you can come up with, will be far better than the dull efforts of Alston Elliott came up with for Five!

Ski Sunday has been a bit of a mess since about 2001 - largely because the BBC lost most of the terrestrial rights to the men's World Cup races to Channel 4. They've only just regained the rights this past season.

During this time they only covered the women's World Cup, and the Kitzbuhel downhill. Their World Championship coverage has also been decimated in recent years.

However, due to a lack of good skiing, I do remember Ski Sunday covering snowboarding and ski jumping more regularly, and I know they show a feature on the 'ChamJam' each year.

In the past the BBC used to showcase a lot of winter sports within 'Sport On Friday', but I think the 'Ski Sunday' brand could easily cope with covering a wider range of snow sports. Its easily identifiable with winter sports in general.

And I wouldnt worry about 'obeying' the BBC Sport brand too much. Especially if its not an in-house production. Magazine programmes have coped without the brand in the past - 'Motor Month' springs to mind.

However - I wouldn't even contemplate ditching that theme tune!

Thanks for the response, all are taken into account.

My follow up post was going to concern the theme tune which I know has been used for 25 years of coverage, and was going to poll whether to use it or not (although I pretty much could have guessed 99.9% of people would probably keep it) but just to make sure.

When you talk about World feed graphics I see where your coming from but I would have to take the same line as the BBC brand graphics, I would probably need to ignor any branding on their account if I were taken this idea forward...

Although I'll still bear the Cricket coverage in mind as I did not know BBC had gained these rights. So thanks for the info! Only problem with cricket is I'm not a massive fan and you can probably see if I'll be working on a project for a year I'd rather have some interest in its topic, but all the same thank you.

I'll keep an open mind until I decide, might even ask around next time I'm at the TVC.

Any other suggestions or feedback let me know... its all appriciated.

Cheers guys, Rob.

Rob,
Forget cricket! If you are not a subscriber to our summer game, and not adversed to hearing willow on stump for 8 hours per day, then trying to design graphics for something you've never really noticed before adds an addtional block in the thought and design processes - which is not what you really want.

Anyway I suspect that for the Ashes highlights the BBC will only be allowed a dirty feed of the coverage off Channel Nine Australia, or Sky Sports UK, so will have those graphics running through the coverage.

With skiing, I'll just elaborate further on what I replied to yesterday.
If I was doing that sport, I would design my graphics for the local broadcaster to work with the FIS world feed package.

Or maybe you may have a think about redesigning the FIS world feed graphics from the ground upwards, and incorporate in your design process a small window of opportunity for the local broadcasters to drop their logo in to the overall onscreen look. Think of it as designing the master to work with the slaves!

Good luck in whatever angle you take with your project.

Cheers Hatten,

I never really thought about re-branding a world feed, but it be more understandable than re-branding Ski Sunday ingoring BBC branding.

Not only that but some world feeds are programmes within themselves so I could use this oppotunity to design title and VT sequences and other Astons from scratch.

It would be a more rational foundation to develop my project from (assuming it will be approved).

Lots of researching to be getting on with

Regards, Rob.

How about looking at Channel 4's skiing programme produced by Hot House Productions. You won't have a C4 brand to get in the way of and it has more programme hours than BBC Ski Sunday?

Good luck