Sky's Branding

Is the UK the only place the sports channels are branded as Sky Sports rather than Sky Sport?

Nope - in Australia and USA the equivalent (Fox) are also pluralised.

Sky1 has launched another new program ident, this time for the homegrown comedy 'The Café'.

The Café is interesting because Craig Cash and Ralf Little are in, the former famous for co-writing and starring in The Royle Family, and the latter famous also for starring in The Royle Family.

I haven't watched it yet, but from other comments apparently it's a slow burner like Early Doors, and not all will like it. I'm certainly going to give it a try though.

I think he meant Sky branded, of course in the states they always say Sports when talking collectively rather than Sport.

Here is the new Sky1 ident for 'The Café' http://www.skyidents.com/----cafe-ident.php
http://www.skyidents.com/resources/the%20cafe%20d.jpg.opt375x205o0,0s375x205.jpg

I really think Sky1 (and 2) got the raw end of the deal out of the February rebrand. Compared to the effort put into the Atlantic and Living sets, there's a distinct after-thought tinge to the whole thing, which is completely out of kilter with their attempt to position it as on an even keel with the big 5 terrestrials.

Doesn't help that the previous look was so swish and prematurely curtailed, of course.

And expensive if you wanted a series-specific ident. There's not much to filming some footage and overlaying the Sky 1 logo over doing that and then having to go do some expensive graphics work with it as well. Swish though they so very much were, I can tell they were costly too in both time and money senses

Not as bad as Sky 3/Pick TV though.

What Sky 1 could've done is have the new logo with the 1 (and Sky 2's 2) in the same style as in the previous logo. That way, they could've just kept the old idents. There would've been nothing to stop them being replaced later - the Sky Onc idents were replaced but the new ones only lasted a few months before the channel logos were changed.

As laughably cheap as Sky3/PickTV were - I think I prefer them to Sky 1/2 to be honest. They start mediorce but at least they don't get boring quite so quickly.

I really don't think there was much wrong with the first 5 sky1 idents introduced back in February. The theme of these idents was to 'reflect British life', you can't really create a Glee ident that reflects British life. There is no excuse for not using the chrome dipped 1 in the trollied and café idents. Sure they are only programe specific idents that will only be used for a few weeks, but how hard would it be to bring the '1' out of storage to the locations where the idents were filmed. No one in charge seems to care about consistancy. It's absoultly rediculous that Sky2 only has two idents, they are so simple to film, just a 6 inch high '2'. When I asked the creator of the idents why there were no more Sky2 idents produced, he replyed that he didn't know why. Just hoping the Christmas ident won't just be stock footage with the Sky1 logo plastered on!

If previous years are anything to go by, don't hold your breath.