Best ones for me where the Powergen weather people from the 90s. It was the only time I tuned into ITV's National Weather was to see which one was played. Normally the sponsor film lasted longer than their weather forecast!
Which kinda links me to say that it was ITV's National Weather that had the first regular programme sponsorship deal.
3's sponsor is awful, the "comedian" has a good point with some quips he makes, but the crap about llamas and other such cack... wouldn't it be better to just recycle YBF clips? That's funnier. Oh, and that godforsaken Bingo advert sponsoring the Jeremy Kyle Show... only cos my mum is watching it and I hear that awful f**king jingle.
The sad thing is, that the man on the 3 adverts
is
a comedian - Spencer Brown. I also can't help noticing that half of the stuff he says is stolen material, made worse.
I shouldn't quote something like Wikipedia but I find this hilarious...
Quote:
In the press, he has been compared to Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, and members of the Marx Brothers, as well as British comedian Harry Hill[who?]. His highest profile gig has been the idents before Channel 4 comedy shows where he tells an unamusing and tame joke to encourage viewers to switch their mobile phone network
I shouldn't quote something like Wikipedia but I find this hilarious...
Quote:
In the press, he has been compared to Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, and members of the Marx Brothers, as well as British comedian Harry Hill[who?]. His highest profile gig has been the idents before Channel 4 comedy shows where he tells an unamusing and tame joke to encourage viewers to switch their mobile phone network
I think the BMIBaby weather stings are pretty good. The little rhymes are well thought and just the BMIBaby character makes it an all-round great sting. The FlyBE weather stings on Meridian, Channel, Westcountry and STV aren't too bad either, even though you can tell the bagpipe player on one of the stings can't play them to save his life!
When I watch the ITV National Weather I ALWAYS tune to UTV. I hate the Sheila's Wheels stings and I hate Michael Winner's "Calm Down" crap. That "comedian" on the stings for You Have Been Watching would be funny... if he had someone kick the crap out of him! Sorry but that's me being honest. To quote Charlie Brooker, he's a bellend!
On the note of regional weather I quite like the Norwich and Peterborough sponsorship stings on Anglia Weather, no music and simple shots of weather in everyday life which go out of focus for the logo and a female voiceover. Completely unobtrusive and not very attention grabbing which is already done by the weather sting, yet I still remember them and unlike the sponsors on the national weather, don't put me off the company.
In fact when it comes to weather, thinking of the later Powergen and E-On stings, it seems the mellow, simple ones are the one that works the best, for me at least.
You know I've never really considered before now just how good the old Powergen ones were. Beautifully simple, shame we don't get things like that anymore.
When you consider Powergen were one of the first sponsors on UK television they spent quite a time developing the idea, the original sponsorship was nothing more than the Powergen logo.
Personally I always though sponsorships worked better when they used to integrate them into the titles in the early 90s. But I suppose it made the association between programme and product a bit too strong and wasn't much good when it came to changing sponsors or repeating programmes. A couple of programmes repeated on More4 for the 25th aniversary of Channel 4 had the integrated sponsors in tact.
Personally I always though sponsorships worked better when they used to integrate them into the titles in the early 90s. But I suppose it made the association between programme and product a bit too strong and wasn't much good when it came to changing sponsors or repeating programmes.
ISTR This Morning and Surprise Surprise during the mid 1990's were both sponsored by BT and both had the sponsorships integrated into their own title sequences, although I think the idea didn't last too long, as I can't remember any other big programme that took this approach.
Who remembers the Legal & General sponsors of the ITV Regional Weather in the early 1990's? Their umbrella logo took pride of place in those.
Quite a few programmes took that approach, the examples from C4 were The Word and Eurotrash I think. The Darling Buds of May were sponsored by Tetley Tea with a seamless merge into the opening frame of the title. Some regional programmes did a similar thing also. They weren't always so well integrated but they were at least sympathetic to the programme's opening titles.
The FlyBE weather stings on Meridian, Channel, Westcountry and STV aren't too bad either, even though you can tell the bagpipe player on one of the stings can't play them to save his life! 