UKGold Lives On

Just watching The Two Ronnies on G.O.L.D. and into an ad break it mixed to a an old (I'm guessing late 90's) UK Gold branded programme slide, almost certainly as a result of the automation not having been programmed with the correct timings as to have cut away before the slide.

Two observations:

1) Was there a good reason for these to have burned these slides into the programme tapes? It seems very short sighted, meaning that cock-ups like this are inevitable after rebranding occurs.

2) They ought to bring back the practice of mixing to a slide into and out of the ads (not necessarily branded with the channel name to facilitiate programmes which go out on several UKTV outlets) - it made the whole thing flow a lot better than the current practice of crashing to a sting.

I remember I made a topic about this quite a while back after I saw a glimpse of a similar slide for Porridge going into the ad break!

It was very short sighted to add them to the tapes as they have done - and I have to agree with your comment re: use of a break slide, I think re-introducing them would give a much better pacing going in and out of breaks - as things are now, especially going into the break, it is a little abrupt I'd say.

I think now they've edited a fade to and from black into the point where the break should be. That's why they're a bit abrupt sometimes

This meas that if they want they can run them without a break - I noticed this on Dave once where a late showing of a particular programme was in a slot 5 minutes shorter, when it came to the break the hole for the break was shown. You can also sometimes catch where they haven't cut away quick enough and you see a tiny bit of the next part.

It was a bit short sighted to edit the slides on, but then it was probably a shortcut to make things technically easier when UKTV started.

I can understand burning the actual slide on, problem is they shouldn't have burned on the old UKTV logo on to them. They're near enough exact to the BBC One and Two pres slides of 1997.

I don't like the way they edit Top Gear and Whose Line Is It Anyway for the breaks on Dave, it looks shoddy.

A lot of the earlier Top Gears were very well edited, going to a sting into the break. It's just the more recent ones that are hacked to death.

The actual logo used is even older - late 90's UK Gold, rather than UKTV Gold.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was remarkably similar, wasn't it. 'UK' portion of the logo in a white box, programme title in Gill Sans, bottom-centre, capitalised. Not that it shouldn't be connected with the BBC in some ways, of course. Lambie-Nairn seemed to be big advocates of Gill Sans - not sure if that's still the case...

Well if the BBC News relaunch is anything to go by...

Probably the same as the holding slides near the top of here.

That's exactly the style.

Yes, I did think of that!

But, considering Gill Sans is the BBC as far as the masterbrand / corporate logo goes, I'd say it was the obvious choice.

Not also forgetting Carlton Television!

I've seen this pop up many times. One that sticks out IMO was a late night showing of an episode of The Young Ones on, at the time, UKTV G2 were the original holding slide was shown. UKTV didn't seem to make any attempt to hide this though, and even cut to the slide when it went back to the episode after the break.