Trailer/promo voice overs

MOTD trails - when shown on Network, prior to the news (Saturdays) - usually end with a slow fade to black (and we get the usual Dolby 5.1 sound glitch going into the ident - which maybe suggests the trail is being played out from the Salford gallery, live). What's the fade to black about - rather than the usual direct cut to the ident? Is it because it's live or was produced so close to broadcast that the Nations have to take it off a dirty network feed and the slow fade to black gives the Nations a little more leeway to neatly cut away to their own ident? I notice that BBC NI usually always manages to get a locally-branded version of the trail endboard inserted on these. Is that added live? Or is the trail pre-recorded and delivered in time for a quick re-edit, locally?

The BBC doesn't usually hire agencies for "advice on how to create and use trails".

Most trails are produced by in-house creative teams, however the BBC does hire agencies to produce some trails... though there is often a certain amount of finishing by the in-house teams required before transmission.

Regarding using trails... placing them in schedules is the job of the media planning/scheduling teams (based on strategies worked out between them and marketing teams).

Similar practices and workflows will exist in other broadcasters.

In the specific case of MOTD, you're right... it is recorded by the MOTD production team and then played out by them live (network counting them on air). To be honest, I've not seen this trail recently, so I've no idea what the fade to black is about... it's not always been there. Trails can be 'clean-feed enabled'... as all programmes are... to allow Nations to get in and out of them cleanly (or if preferred can be simply taken from the dirty feed).

As for BBC NI having local branding on that particular trail... it would be achieved by routing the MOTD studio output onto a spare clean feed circuit and recording that, then quickly editing on the branding, rendering out a file and placing that in the local schedule (matching network's on air and duration timings). Not always achievable due to the tight turnaround required.

I noticed motd never bothered to make scotland only trail for the 22.59 junction. Would someone need to tell them to make another one or better still a more genric version like after the news?

Live trails. Many years ago when I worked in telecine, budget and time constraints meant that sometimes trails were played out live from telecine with the announcer performing the live voice over. The promotions dept would wind down the spool to the pre-determined 'in point', mark it with a white chinagraph cross and then put a chinagraph line continuously back up the film to the start of the 5 second run point for the telecine machine (the telecine machine required 5 seconds to run up to speed so you parked the machine at the start of the long chinagraph pencil line).

This worked very well, although it was a bit of a bother to load up the film as it was obviously across two reels. After the promo tx the film went back into the system for the later actual tx which was likely to be some days away. The china marks were then supposed to be wiped off. Sometimes, very occasionally they weren't and the results on air were 'interesting'.

Here's an example of CBBC doing a live-anno over a trail. It seems that they stopped doing this when they left the broom cupboard in the summer of 1994.

Chris Jarvis voiced CBBC promos for many years, even (I think I'm right in saying) when he went to ITV and Channel 4 for a brief time (before returning as the face of CBeebies in 2002).

MOTD is rarely seen in Scotland, they usually opt out for Sportscene covering the Scottish leagues.

They don't because they only have the rights to those highlights on Sunday nights these days. The English Premier League has international appeal, unlike it's Scottish counterpart so it would be mad not utilise those rights north of the border.

Quite. But that probably explains why there isn't a trailer for it on BBC Scotland.

There is a trailer for it, because it's on every week. Sportscene is shown on Sunday teatimes and repeated on Sunday nights, after Match of the Day 2.

The complaint seemed to be that there was no specific trailer for Scotland this week when, unusually for a Match of the Day, it was shown later in Scotland. But it's worth pointing out that BBC Sport do seem particularly sensitive about the nations and will always point out when programmes are at different times in the nations, even if on MOTD2 Extra that means timeslots rotating round.