All of the national BBC Radio stations appear to be getting new logos. I had noticed that the logo for my station of choice, Radio Five Live, had completely changed at the same time as the theme music got watered down yet again (anyone else remember when it sounded punchy and authoritative?).

About time in a sense, because I can remember that Five Live had their old logo from even before I started listening to it regularly, which is a looong time. In fact, most of the BBC Radio logos are pretty damn old, as this website shows. Seven or eight years old in fact, which is good going for a logo these days (particularly one for a TV or radio station). So it was probably time for a bit of a refresh, although — as usual with these sort of things — the responses appear to have been lukewarm.

Indeed, some of the attempts at new logos are rather uninspiring. Radio 1’s has barely changed from what it had before. Meanwhile, Radio 2’s logo has been changed from the neat neon sign to the utterly dull plain 2 symbol.

But there are some signs of clever creativity. The incorporation of a bass clef into the numeral 3 for Radio 3’s logo is inspired, although it does make that numeral look slightly odd. Similarly, Radio 4’s logo cleverly has a speech mark in it, while 1Xtra incorporates a ‘play’ symbol.

BBC 7’s old logo was one of the best going, so the new version was always going to be a disappointment. It has turned out to be a greatly watered down version, although with a nod towards the old logo.

Similarly, 6 Music’s new logo is a bit like a watered down version of the old logo. I was never a fan of the old 6 Music logo. I never understood why that ‘6′ was so slanted and, well, big and fat. To represent Phill Jupitus?

BBC Asian Network’s logo is by far the jazziest. It makes me wonder why all of the other stations opted to go for more reserved, plain logos when the Asian Network can have such a colourful and vibrant one.

What I find most interesting about the new logos, though, is a point about branding in general. Firstly, the logos’ focus on numerals has effectively entailed a name change for one of the stations. The difference between ‘Radio Five Live’ and ‘Radio 5 Live’ might be subtle. But it was obviously important enough for someone to go around the website and, like a cuddly Stalin, change all instances of ‘Five Live’ to ‘5 Live’.

As such, overnight one of my tags has become irrelevant. Still, whoever it was that went around changing the website missed a couple of bits, including 5 Live’s own studios as my in-depth investigation of the website reveals! Notice also, that bbc.co.uk/5live still redirects to bbc.co.uk/fivelive. These pesky rebranding exercises are more trouble than they realise.

(Update: I have just realised that the changes on the Radio 5 Live website have even gone to the extent of writing ‘live’ with a lowercase ‘l’. What a load of arse! It is a bit like when Channel 5 changed its name to ‘five’. It just looks stupid! And it looks double stupid when some of the programmes are now called things like ‘5 live Report’ and ‘5 live Breakfast’.)

Another point is that all of the new logos contain the words ‘BBC Radio’, even when some of the station’s names do not. In other words, BBC 6 Music is not now called BBC Radio 6 Music, and BBC 7 is not now BBC Radio 7. But perhaps this is just a halfway house before going all the way to calling these radio stations.

Presumably the reason 6 Music and BBC 7 omitted the ‘Radio’ tag from their names was to emphasise the fact that you did not need to (indeed, you could not) use an old fashioned tranny to listen to them. This always irritated me, because surely there was more potential for confusion with the television channels.

I mean, the BBC used to always advertise Freeview and how you could get “eight BBC channels”. Yet the BBC have an outlet called BBC 7. Surely that is just asking for confusion. It would surely make more sense to call the radio station Radio 7 and leave the BBC X monikers to the television stations.

As the years have gone on, we have come to learn that radio is not a dirty word on the internet (or, indeed, on your DAB set). Radio is radio is radio, whether you are listening to it on the internet, as a podcast, one of those fancy-schmancy phones or, er, the radio. I mean, the internet is teeming with internet radio stations. Even I have two (courtesy of Last.fm)!

And another thing. Why haven’t the new logos incorporated the really swish ‘radio’ logo that appears on the actual BBC Radio website?

I think I have just given myself a headache over logos. Time to go back into hibernation.