BBC indents had began in the early 1950s, the BBC first displayed a logo between programmes to identify its service. As technology has rapidly increased over time the idents have gone from plain black and white indents to quite spectacular mini clips. Also idents have become very important to brand themselves against competitors in the television industry, so idents have to be much more eye catching to the public. As the BBC was one of the first TV channels there was no need for a station ident in the early days. The date was 2 December 1953 and it saw the arrival of the first ident, which was nicknamed the Bat's Wings. This was quite simple on the eye (second ident in the video) it was called the bat wings due to the two shapes on the sides of the circle. Circle's as you will soon see were and still are an influence to BBC idents.The second ident is what could be said to be the channel's most famous emblem, the globe, It appeared 10 years after the batwings.On 15 November 1969, BBC1 began transmitting in colour, and with the arrival of colour came the mirror globe ident, this lasted on the BBC for 5 years. Most of their idents last around that sort of time period.In 1985, computers had become far more technical and graphics technology had progressed sufficiently that the mechanical mirror globe was replaced by the computer originated world, which showed a semi-transparent blue globe with golden continents and a golden styled BBC1. There was a wait as the globe was supposed to launch on the 1st of January 1985 but was delayed until the 18th of February the same year. Eastenders began to run around that time and that is why they were delayed, to accommodate the new show. From start-up until 6:00pm , the older NODD mirror globe was used. From 7:00pm until viewers would sleep that night, the newer COW globe was used. Also,there was a first for Holding slides, trailers and promotions which included the BBC1 golden logo which brought the brand together. The COW globe used the same classic clock face as before, with a couple differences. The background was now black and it now had blue counters, gold hands and the BBC1 logo was also included in the bottom. although controversially... the centre dot was removed for some unknown reason, although it remained on the BBC1 Wales and Scotland clocks. By 1991 there was another new ident, the virtual styled globe, it was designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn who was a branding agency at the time and he was quite popular in that business. The ident had a figure 1 inside a rotating see through globe that was accompanied by an atmosphere above the famous BBC logo. Also coming at that time was a different new look clock which was using analogue'd time. It was like a real clock that you'd have on a wall as you could see the seconds move. That ident the virtual globe was on air for 6 years. It was replaced in 1997 as technology got drastically updated where there was less computer work taking place and more live filming's like the hot air balloon which was introduced which shows a hot air balloon passing a range of landmarks across the UK. Like all the idents it consisted of the BBC logo but this time a new look logo which you can see in the video. Overall there were over 50 different hot air balloon idents due to different locations that were used. Also in that timeframe saw the first widescreen ident. times were getting very exciting for the BBC. The balloons were cut shorter than they were expected to be on air. This is because a new BBC controller had a passionate hate for the balloons which popped the fun. She described them as boring, slow and to have nothing to do with the channel. This also came to the end of the globe branding and came a more cultural idents for the international audiences. This is also when the red box that you now see the BBC logo in came about. The new idents featured dancers of a different culture dancing in different locations to different genres of music. These were to be kind... unpopular as one of the idents involved disabled dancers in wheelchairs while others were saddened by the globe no longer being in use. These were in use for only 4 years, which shows that they wasn't a big hit. From 2006 to this day (18th of September 2014) the dancing idents were abandoned and the BBC returned to less colourful schemes. The logo also changed to lower a lower case 'bbc'one. It introduced a new ident style of circles. which were more easy on the eye. It also had a more diverse audience from swimmers hippo's to football players. The circles link to the old globe that was used years ago. As you can see from the video theres a lot of improvement in the idents and they become more multi cultured and diverse. I personally enjoy the football styled idents. |
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