In the early 1990s, the BBC ran a short-lived service called BBC Select. It was designed to deliver highly specialist programming to narrow audiences. The programmes were broadcast after BBC One or BBC Two had stopped broadcasting for the day.
This example demonstrates the sort of thing BBC Select did. This is a programme about the Disability Working Allowance.
BBC Select was notable for using scrambled broadcasts. Anyone who wanted to receive BBC Select broadcasts had to buy a set-top box that would decode the signal and set your video cassette recorder to record it.
This video shows the scrambling in action. You need to fast forward to around 5:25 in this video. Alternatively, you can wait patiently through the four minute long ident — typically over-the-top for the 1990s!
Some television presentation is designed to tell you what programmes are coming up. Others might tell you the time.
This ident, on the other hand, tells you what country you are in — just in case you found yourself sitting in your front room and suddenly wondering where you are.
This isn’t even from all that long ago — 1 January 1998 in fact. But you wouldn’t see a closedown like this on BBC Two nowadays. I love that classy clock. Clocks would disappear from BBC Two later that year.
It is topped off with an appropriate sting, even if it is a little bit spooky for 3am!
Here is another piece of television presentation that has brought the memories flooding back. An early morning (4am) Channel 4 Schools broadcast.
I remember the blue slide with the Channel 4 logo on it. It actually looks very classy. Channel 4 had quite a slick presentational style at this point. They used Gill Sans a lot, before it became the BBC’s corporate font a few years later.
Like all of the best television presentation, this is ever so slightly scary. These Channel 4 Schools idents and countdowns used to scare me witless as a child.
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night, and switching on the telly just to check that the world hasn’t gone mad overnight. Then you tune into Channel 4 and are presented with that freakish, ghostly Channel 4 Schools ident. These figures from the past are rigid and look as though they have been stuffed, yet they are staring right at you, beady-eyed. It certainly sent the willies right up me as a nine-year-old!
The music is quite freaky too. It sounds like it is being transmitted from a shipwreck.
Considering the target audience — primary school children — it is all very arty and avant-garde. As a piece of television presentation, I love it — but it doesn’t quite seem right for schools programmes, does it?
And now, with my web hat on, check out the amazingly 1990s URL advertised at the end:
http://www.schools.channel4.co.uk/c4schools
I certainly remember seeing web addresses that were a lot more unweildy than this being broadcast on the television in the 1990s. (An early Blue Peter URL that was so long it had to scroll across the screen sticks in my mind — but more on that in a future television presentation gem of the week.) But the needless complexity of this URL still amuses me.
I am conscious that I have not yet featured any ITV idents, despite the rich treasure trove waiting to be delved into.
This is the classic, eye-straining original ident for Harlech.
You would never — never — see an ident like this these days. In fact, you probably wouldn’t have seen any other idents like this in those days either.
At the very least, this ought to carry a “flashing lights” warning if it were broadcast today!
And what a strange name for a television station. A bit egotistical for it to be named after the station’s founder. Harlech shook off the weird name when it began broadcasting in colour and became HTV.
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