Nice S.E.T cockup at 6.30 - after the trailer, we hear the start of the balloon which is abruptly stopped by the BBC News 'crash' sound and headline bed. Laurie then reads out four headlines in vision (no pictures like normal) and then waits for a little while. The titles don't appear so the headline bed is faded out and Laurie starts his first story. Oops!
Also, have we got an infinite supply of balloons?! 'Market' appeared at 1.30pm - nice to have a lifestyle version.
BBC ONE East Midlands have a few balloons and I've seen Market and Skateboard before East Midlands Today before. Sadly they seem to have withdrawn the lifestlye ones.
Its very rare that you see the same balloon in a week. Whereas on BBC ONE Midlands, there are three balloons. Very poor!
Well NWT use a few - two over water, one where the balloon just sweeps round, and another where it suddenly jumps, the cliff one, fields, and two with houses/offices below.
BBC SE Today probably play their announcement out from Minidisc, as well as their headline vamp. Sounds like someone pressed the wrong button? (and ran the vamp instead of the announcement?) That wouldn't explain the lack of pictures though.
BBC South East and BBC East Midlands probably use more BBC One balloons as they have recently relaunched with servers, and have quite a large amount of storage space. The other BBC regions mainly used laser discs until recently (though have now moved over to a PC/HD VERA system) and often only really had space for about three BBC One idents - so probably only made up local versions with their regional BBC One ident on them.
(Also I think some regions try to stick to balloons relating to their local area - though not all regions have that many!)
Interesting that three of the North West balloons were withdrawn nationally over a year ago (and never had the URL added).
I'm sure when BBC London, with all their high-tech equipment, starts properly we'll get a bigger selection. Oh hang on - are we getting a BBC ONE London ident now? I keep forgetting to check at 6.30.
