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Archive: idents

Weetabix idents

31 July 2007 16:39

Categories: Entertainment, Food and drink, General, Personal, Television

Perhaps my geekiest guilty pleasure is an interest in television idents. Many a lonely Friday evening has been spent perusing such websites as TV Ark and The TV Room. Not because I’m a sad loner, you understand, but because it’s the really cool thing to do these days.

I also love cereals. The most functional cereal of them all is Weetabix. It’s the only way to go if you have a particularly challenging day ahead. There is nothing in the world that three Weetabix can’t solve. Except perhaps indigestion.

So an advertising campaign that combines the might of Weetabix with the quaint kitsch of classic television idents cannot be anything but awesome. I don’t watch much television these days, so I guess there is the chance that everyone in the world apart from me already knew about it and this post is a bit like going, “ALL BECAUSE THE LADY LOVES MILK TRAY! LOL!”

The only way I learned about the Weetabix advertising campaign was from a post at Idents.tv. I had seen one of the adverts before out of the corner of my eye, probably when I was fast forwarding through the adverts during a grand prix. It didn’t occur to me that it was supposed to mimic idents, with their trippy ambient music and strange abstract visuals.

The TV theme is continued at the Weetabix.tv website, where all of the ident-adverts are available to view. A lot of them have clearly been inspired by classic BBC Two idents from the 1990s.

We have all seen idents thousands of times. Yet, they are forgotten by many and treated as though they are merely wallpaper at best and an annoyance at worst. Yet, idents are the most familiar sight on television; a reminder that all is right in the world. They are beautiful pieces of design that are almost always better than the programme that follows them. So it’s great to see idents being recognised by Weetabix in their advertising campaign.

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I’ll miss our little 2 friend

19 February 2007 01:31

Categories: Entertainment, General, Television

Well yesterday BBC Two unveiled its new look, not too long after BBC One launched its new idents. Being a bit of a TV pres geek enthusiast like James O’Malley, I am of course interested (even though I seem to watch hardly any actual television these days).

The reception seems to have been fairly mixed, but I’m not a big fan of them. As with BBC One’s almost universally derided dancers, I liked BBC Two’s ‘personality’ idents of 2001–2007 more than most.

But for many, nothing will beat the classic sets of idents introduced in 1991 and 1997. It is true that the 1990s idents are absolute classics. I prefer the original ones introduced in 1991 — they are classy and sophisticated, but not too pretentious. The music was brilliant as well. Check out one of my favourites, Silk:

(N.B. Self-indulgently, I will be including a BBC Two ident YouTube Extravaganza ‘below the fold’.)

I preferred the 1991 idents like Silk to the ones added later on (such as the hugely popular Dog). They did inject a bit of humour, but I prefer the artyness of the earlier idents.

Still, I did like the humorous idents used from 2001–2007. My favourite was Domino. I just love how angry the one with the whistle gets.

As for the new idents, the ‘window on the world’ theme is an interesting idea, but clearly this entire new look owes a lot to Channel 4. There are also a few annoying oddities. Firstly, towards the end of Cappuccino it starts to look like one of those photographs where the photographer’s thumb is partially over the lens.

Also, I wish they would get rid of that restrictive box. BBC One ditched its box when it relaunched in September. I would have thought that BBC Two would have all the more reason to given that it’s got a massive ’2′ logo all over its idents. Why not just place the BBC logo close to the ’2′ logo? It’s not as if we need to be told that it’s BBC Two twice.

I get the feeling that these idents will grow on me. But I will miss the personality of our robotic friend.

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BBC One’s sharp new look

26 September 2006 18:33

Categories: Biased BBC, Current affairs, Entertainment, Television

Regular readers will know that I’m interested in television presentation. People like me make the world go round, etc etc. Anyway, today the BBC unveiled the new idents for BBC One which will be launched on screen next Saturday.

Idents are neglected. Most people don’t pay much attention to them. But over the next few years these short films used to introduce the programmes will be watched by far more people than the most popular television programme could ever hope for. And most people will have an opinion on them.

An awful lot of people decried BBC One’s current ‘dancer’ idents for being ‘politically correct’ because they had the audacity to show black people doing a dance. I know I’m in a minority here, but I actually quite like the dancer idents, although they are getting a bit tired. But how cool is Capoiera (Realplayer link; nabbed off TV ARK)! There were a few truly cringeworthy ones though, like Festival. Eurgh.

So it’s time for some new ident action, and here they are. MediaGuardian also has a full video of one of them — Bikes.

It certainly looks very slick and the music is pretty cool. But I can’t really imagine it being used into a programme. It would work with a sport programme, but anything else? I guess you will only be able to tell when you see it in its context.

I quite like the logo as well. It’s much better than the current restrictive box which is hidden away in the corner as though it’s unwanted.

As for the circular theme, some people are suggesting that it is meant to be a subtle nod towards the globe, BBC One’s traditional symbol. I never liked the idea of the globe being used as BBC One’s symbol. It’s not as if there’s anything particularly global about BBC One. Does BBC One own the world?

Digital Spy has more images of the idents.

Update: And they’re A snip at just around a pound a second.

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ITV Schools scarred me for life

17 April 2006 02:02

Categories: Entertainment, General, Nostalgia, Personal, Technology, Television

ITV Play slinky ident
ITV Play barker
Images nicked off Andrew Wood at TV Forum Another ‘Participation TV’ channel (i.e. scheming, conning, shite shite quiz channel) launches this week. ITV Play is replacing Men & Motors on Freeview. All I can say is:

  1. at least Men & Motors isn’t much of a loss
  2. at least it will have Quizmania on it
  3. at least it has really pretty idents!

People who have read this blog for a long time may know that I am interested in all of this television presentation nonsense. When I was a wee nipper, I found ITV regions fascinating. I just did, don’t ask me why. It was probably just the shiny logos.

It wasn’t only television logos either. Apparently my first word was ‘gas’. According to my parents I often pointed at the logo on the gas van and shouted ‘GAS’. I guess it’s one way to learn how to read.

If a station relaunched with a new set of idents, I’d usually end up watching the channel all day just to take it in. Sad or what? Imagine my delight when I discovered a few years ago, through the wonder of the internet, that I wasn’t the only one.

Anyway, when I was younger, some idents really scared the crap out of me. I remember a particular Channel 4 ident that was used to introduce its American Football programmes. It always made me jump because the ’4′ figure made a loud grunt. Numbers don’t grunt! I can remember actually having nightmares about it.

ITV Schools ident But the scariest ident of them all was surely the rotating ITV Schools one. I’m not too sure why I was so frightened by it, but it seriously gave me the willies. I remember once actually running through to tell my mum when I managed to sit through it!

Maybe I was worried that the rather hefty-looking ITV logos would spin off course and hit me. Perhaps I couldn’t comprehend the advanced computer graphics. Everybody knows that CGI dates horribly. But despite the fact that the ITV Schools ident is almost twenty years old, I think they still look amazingly good even judging by today’s standards.

There is an excellent feature on TV ARK all about the making of this ident. It sounds like it was a truly massive task. It’s amazing to think that they would go to so much bother just to create a way to introduce some television programmes!

When I was six, the spinning ITV Schools ident and ITV Schools itself was gone forever. So I wouldn’t have to be scared by the evil ident, right? Well imagine my shock when (at the tender age of six, remember) the brand new Channel 4 Schools ident ended up being this freaky thing. The spooky countdown music (which I now actually think is pretty cool) sounded like an accompaniment to a drowning. This is music for introducing schools programmes! Did they not realise that children would be watching?!

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TMF is The sHits

1 April 2006 00:14

Categories: Entertainment, Music, Television

Music channels really are a load of pish. Apparently it is cheaper to run a music channel than it is to publish a magazine. And it shows. This is probably why Emap like to milk every last droplet out of their magazine brands while the magazines themselves have gone the way of the dodo (hello, Smash Hits!).

Freeviewers like myself have two and two-halves options. There is The Hits and TMF — the two halves being E4 Music and E4+1 Music+1 or whatever it may be called. I have to say that E4 really must be applauded for actually making music television watchable. You can tell they’ve put in a bit of effort to make it a bit more diverse, aiming for a more discerning audience. It’s just a shame that if I ever have a day free to dispose of by vegging in front of a glowing square, I am hardly ever up early enough to watch E4 Music.

The Hits and TMF are just diabolical though. When I first got Freeview I found it difficult to believe quite how many adverts they were broadcasting. Every three videos or so it would be time for another commercial break — one long enough for you to flick through all the other channels at least twice. And there are the adverts themselves of course. All for ‘ringtone clubs’ aimed at people with the intelligence of a fish.

Even worse are these new quiz subscriptions, which are like some evil combination of quiz channels and ringtone clubs. I wonder if anybody has yet won that £2000 they were giving away to one lucky person who was stupid enough to subscribe but clever enough to know that another name for ‘money machine’ is ‘blackbox’. …What?

Despite the fact that it appears to be so cheap to run a music channel, I saw recently that The Hits has jumped onto the quiz channel bandwaggon. At least it’s very late at night. What gets me is that they’ve decided to squeeze in a couple of hours of Teleshopping as well! I mean really! Do we really need yet more Teleshopping?!

Meanwhile, TMF is the home for amusing technical glitches. If you’ve ever watched TMF late at night you will no doubt be aware of ‘Matchmaker X-rated’, the on-screen money-making scheme that encourages twelve-year-old nincompoops to text their name and date of birth which in turn makes the ‘Matchmaker’ generate some random naughty text. A typical caption might say, “Ooh, you just made the computer cum in your eye. Try felching her ear tonight.” Well that once went out during the day.

Andrew at Cage of Monkeys has his own idea for a music channel:

NO ZANE LOWE!

Give that man an EPG number!

In the process, Andrew linked to this blog of interesting music videos. Definitely one to subscribe to. I like this video for Jamie Lidell’s ‘New Me’. It reminds me a bit of those smart BBC Four idents. Must have been a chore to time it all.

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