This BBC One closedown from 1996 didn’t quite go to plan.
Just as well it was time to go home.
I always find it interesting watching closedowns from the past. Continuity announcers just don’t seem so important these days, do they? Today they would never tell you to take care when heading out on the roads.
Next weekend sees the start of the Formula 1 season. So for this week’s television presentation gem of the week, I had to feature The Chain. This week there is a campaign to get The Chain to number 1 in the charts for the start of the Formula 1 season.
Here is the title sequence to Grand Prix from 1979, the first Formula 1 season to be broadcast in full by the BBC.
Like many BBC Sport theme tunes, The Chain has gone into legend. Just as Soul Limbo is inextricably linked with cricket, so The Chain goes hand-in-hand with Formula 1. This is despite a 12 year break in which it was never used in ITV’s coverage of the sport.
I fondly remember this 1995 title sequence, which was being used when I was first getting into F1 (unfortunately this is the best quality I could find).
The Chain is one of those elements of Formula 1 broadcasting that have become almost religiously important to many of the sport’s followers. Murray Walker is another.
There is almost a folklore of F1 broadcasting which has made F1 fans particularly protective, and often critical of even the highest quality broadcasting. Commentators James Allen and Jonathan Legard have both learned that to their cost.
When F1 returned to the BBC for the 2009 season, they had no choice but to choose The Chain (albeit with a lot of sound effects added).
There was some alarming news for F1 fans yesterday. According to The Guardian, the BBC is considering ditching F1 coverage as a result of budget cuts.
I used to think the chances of the BBC dropping its F1 coverage at the end of the current contract were fairly high. For critics of the BBC, F1 is an easy target.
For one thing, the image of F1 as a glamorous, expensive sport for rich men doesn’t help. Nor, indeed, does the perception that it is environmentally unfriendly.
There is also a myth that Formula 1 can be adequately covered by commercial broadcasters. Anyone who actually tried to sit down and watch a race on ITV will know that this is simply not true. But the fact that it has only been back on the BBC for two years so far means that it is not seen as a BBC jewel.
But since it regained the rights in 2009, the BBC have done such an exemplary job of covering the sport that it has become a matter of even greater importance to many F1 fans. It’s not just about the lack of advert interruptions, which was a huge barrier to ITV gaining acceptance from fans. It is the sheer breadth and depth of the BBC’s coverage.
The quality of the programme itself is top-notch, despite apparently having a much lower budget than ITV. All practice sessions are broadcast on the red button or online. And post-race analysis often goes on for as long as the race itself. There is plenty of archive footage on offer too.
As a result, ratings for Formula 1 are generally much higher than they were by the time ITV was finished with it. A recent BBC Trust report revaled that Formula 1 coverage was exceeding all of its targets and enabled it to reach a young male audience that the BBC otherwise finds difficult to reach.
The other sporting event that was regarded as a ‘hit’ by all measures was Wimbledon. This is the other sport apparently being considered for the chop.
So are the BBC planning to do a 6 Music, and demonstrate that BBC coverage of these events needs to be saved as a result of strong viewer opinion? Or is F1 genuinely being lined up for the axe?
It’s pretty clear that the BBC’s F1 coverage has faced a budget cut for the year. The BBC took the odd decision of removing the well-respected commentator Jonathan Legard, and failing to properly replace him. Instead, the rest of the existing team has been reshuffled and each member of the on-screen team will be spread more thinly.
For instance, it is expected that Martin Brundle will continue to do his pre-race gridwalk, do a full race commentary, and participate in the post-race analysis. David Coulthard will continue in his punditry role both before and after the race, in addition to being the co-commentator during the race. This would normally amount to four or more hours of continuous live broadcasting (more if the race is delayed for some reason), without much in the way of a break.
As former grand prix drivers, there is no doubt that Martin Brundle and David Coulthard have stamina. But I think even the most seasoned broadcasting pros would find this sort of workload to be a tough act.
So why not bring someone new on board? Is it just a case of a salami slice budget cut, or is the BBC preparing to wind down its coverage of F1 altogether?
Welcome to the first ever television presentation gem of the week. Each week, on a Friday afternoon, I plan to indulge in one of my geekiest and most shameful traits — an unhealthy interest in television presentation. If you read the post below, you will get the gist…
This is a brilliant example of television presentation gold from Christmas 1996. There are several notable aspects to this clip.
Firstly, it is a closedown — always a favourite among television presentation geeks. Also, it contains a Christmas ident. These are sought-after for their short-lived nature. Moreover, this clip is from Channel 4′s ‘circles’ era, which was quickly replaced due to its unpopularity. (It is a reasonably amusing ident too.)
But the reason I have chosen this clip to be the first ever television presentation gem of the week is that it exhibits 4-Tel On View. Moreover, as 4-Tel On View stopped broadcasting at the beginning of 1997, this must be one of the very last broadcasts.
4-Tel On View was Channel 4′s equivalent of the more famous Pages from Ceefax, which can still sometimes be seen on the BBC. This was designed as a low-budget filler programme, broadcasting selected pages from Channel 4′s teletext service, normally very late at night or very late in the morning. Presumably the logic is that it is better than a testcard.
As you can see, it has a quirkiness and a sense of humour that is somewhat lacking from Pages from Ceefax. It’s also a world away from the po-faced and corporate ITV Nightscreen, which 4-Tel On View producers Intelfax went on to make.
I can remember watching 4-Tel on View as a child, and I could never work out why or how it contained animations, which were lacking on both Pages from Ceefax and actual teletext. According to Wikipedia, it was all down to a “Magic RITE box” — so now you know.
Another highlight that dates this clip is the trumpeting of some very 1990s technology in the television listings. You can watch Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure in PALplus, with Nicam stereo, and subtitles on 888!
Another odd thing about this clip is that some of the pages and animations seem to scroll through far too quickly. If this clip is playing at the right speed (and the ident at the start seems perfectly normal to me), then this is a usability flaw of 4-Tel on View that made it almost useless!
Can anyone explain the ‘Beware of imitations’ animation? Was there some sort of rogue 4-Tel On View in operation?
Comments closed
It has just about the simplest and least imaginative channel name possible. But over the years the people behind Channel 5 have still managed to regularly get themselves ito a bit of a tizzy over what their channel is actually called.
So for years, the powers that be insisted that you should just call it Five. Or better still, five, without a capital letter. It was never ‘Channel Five’, and it was definitely not ‘Channel 5′.
You see, ‘Channel 5′ was associated with trashy TV movies and the notorious “three Fs” (films, football and fucking). This image worked in the pre-digital era of the first few years of the channel’s life.
But with 101 trashier other sides available to anyone with a posh new digital telly, Channel 5 had to go upmarket. Which meant spelling out the number 5 in full. But without a capital letter. Or the word ‘channel’ in front of it.
This was despite the fact that it was impossible to seriously talk about it this way. Saying to someone that you “saw a really good programme on five” would leave them staring at you in confusion — and not just because Channel 5 has no good programmes.
Still, I guess everyone just about got used to it after about nine years. That must be why new owner Richard Desmond has decided that it is better just to call it ‘Channel 5′ after all.
The branding brouhaha extends also to Channel 5′s digital channels. Even the relatively simple ‘Five US’ has been changed in the past to become ‘Five USA’. Now it is, of course, ‘5USA’.
I noticed today that its other digital channels has changed its name yet again. It was originally launched in 2006 as Five Life. I guess that would be an all right name, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was extremely similar to the name of a certain high-profile BBC radio station. Whoops.
(Incidentally, BBC Radio 5 live is another station that would like you not to use a capital letter. The ‘l’ in the word ‘live’ is supposed to be lowercase. No matter that this looks really awkward wherever it is written.)
After a couple of years, Five Life became Fiver. It’s not clear why. It’s like a £1 note, but for the noughties! Perhaps £5 was the channel’s original programming budget.
Now it is called 5*, which is a bit awkward. The logo styles it as a nice five-pointed star, but in text materials an asterisk is used instead. Presumably you’re supposed to pronounce it “five star”, but it could as easily be “five pow” — I don’t know, and I am not prepared to watch for long enough to find out.
What does the asterisk signify? That this is just a temporary name and it might change again? Or is 5* a five letter swear word that you are provoked into uttering if you have to actually watch that garbage?
Follow me. I have two Twitter accounts.
I am Duncan Stephen, based in Dundee but originally from Fife. I work as the Web Editor for the University of St Andrews. This is a personal blog.
My interests include motorsport and experimental / electronic music.
Comments closed