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.

Is this the greatest news title sequence of all time? It was controversial at the time, but I love it.

The strikingly bold transmitter logo was designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn, who is arguably the most important person in television idents history. He is the person behind some of the most popular idents of all time, including the original Channel 4 blocks and the ’2′ figures for BBC Two.

But this BBC News logo appeared to be a misfire. It was unpopular with viewers, some of whom even likened the logo to Nazi imagery.

But I think the logo looks fantastic and ahead of its time. The music is brilliant too.

This title sequence was introduced in 1988, although the clip is from 1991.

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?

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’.

Another week, another rebranding

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?

This the accompanying article to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion. Parts of it are based on a previous article, What is STV playing at?

You can listen to the full podcast below.

In a recent episode of The Pod Delusion, Mark Thompson spoke about the good old days when ITV was still a federation of regional television stations. He outlined how, in England and Wales over the past ten or fifteen years, ITV’s regional diversity has given way to a bland umbrella brand.

But not all of the nooks on the ITV network have succumbed to the juggernaut. Four of the ITV regions are still independently owned, and three avoid using the ITV brand. In the Channel Islands, Channel Television still owns the franchise, even though it uses ITV1 branding. But in Northern Ireland, viewers are greeted by idents for UTV. And where I live, in Scotland, the two ITV regions operate as STV.

I can say with authority, given that I live here, that the reality of regional broadcasting on Channel 3 is not quite as rosy as Mark Thompson would like to remember. It certainly is not as quaint and charming as the ITV we remember from our youth — and, incidentally, it was delightful to hear the idents and jingles during Mark’s report.

Sadly, STV is a bit of a basket case. Apparently strapped for cash, for the past year or two it has been embroiled in a dispute with ITV plc that has only served to disadvantage viewers. ITV is trying to gain money that has been allegedly been owed by STV for over ten years. Meanwhile, STV is dropping as many ITV programmes as it can get away with in an apparent attempt to stop owing any more money.

This means that many of the ITV network’s most popular drama programmes have been dropped by STV. This has left Scottish viewers with no options if they want to watch some of the best British commercial television programmes.

Publicly, STV say this is all a brave stance for regional broadcasting in Scotland. That does not really explain why most of the replacements have been cheap imports, films and repeats. As amusing as South Park may be, it is not exactly an adequate replacement for the likes of Kingdom. Incidentally, South Park is seemingly supposed to count as Scottish programming because, in the words of STV director of broadcast services Bobby Hain, it is “mischievous and cheeky… just like the Scottish people.”

Bobby Hain often singles out Al Murray for particular criticism. He reckons that Scots cannot relate to a comedy cockney landlord, forgetting that there is in fact nothing Scots enjoy more than laughing at English stereotypes.

This strategy certainly is not being done for the benefit of the Scottish people. We can tell this because the ratings have largely fallen through the floor. Infamously, STV once ditched Agatha Christie’s Marple in favour of the film Blue Crush — because crap surfing movies set in Hawaii are really Scottish, right? It was a disaster for STV. You could almost have squeezed the viewers into a large football stadium. With just 6% of Scottish television viewers watching it, this made it the least watched of the five main channels in Scotland.

STV have recently broadcast Fitz, the woeful 1990s American remake of Cracker. Presumably they have done this because it is supposed to count as Scottish, despite the fact that it is American. In fact, Fitz more accurately describes what STV viewers go through when they realise that their favourite programme has been replaced by a low budget michty-me, jings, crivvens and help ma boab bag of shite.

Because when STV are showing “regional” programming, it is a parochial embarrassment. One of the programmes it’s pushing most is The Hour. Imagine a cross between The One Show and Live From Studio Five, with a twentieth of the budget and presented from a shed. That barely describes the horror.

In the evenings, STV broadcasts STV Casino. This is the sort of gambling programme I railed against in a previous edition of The Pod Delusion.

More ambitiously, STV sought to find out the Greatest Scot. Among the nominees for the title was John Logie Baird, the inventor of the television. What Logie Baird can’t have foreseen was that his compatriots would be unable to watch anything decent on it.

Soon enough, STV will run out of “Scottish” topics to make programmes about. What next? The History of the Word ‘Outwith‘? Barry Ferguson’s Greatest V-Signs? Susan Boyle’s Ten Favourite Ditches?

Maybe there will be a celebration of the Scots language and / or dialect, with a version of Countdown played in the Scots tongue. Sadly, the only exciting action would be a Buckfast-fuelled brawl surrounding the precise spelling of words like ‘airse’ (‘erse’?) and ‘bawbag’ (‘ba’bag’?).

This new found love for “local” programming really is rich coming from STV. This is a station that, just a few years ago, would do anything to avoid showing locally produced programmes. It transparently sought to meet its quota of regional programmes with cynical late-night repeats of Weir’s Way and extra editions of Scotland Today Interpreted For The Deaf.

This all makes me wonder just what the ‘S’ in STV stands for. Is it ‘Scottish’? Or is it ‘stultifying’? ‘Stupid’? ‘Sellotape’? In fact, I think it’s probably ‘shite’.

Mark Thompson’s idea is a nice one, but is based on a rose-tinted view rather than the reality we Scots have to live with just now. It is true that something needs to change in order for ITV to survive. But the solution to that is surely obvious when you think about it — they should bring back Blockbusters.

I have to say where I was when each of these events happened.

Princess Diana’s death – 31 August 1997

I was in bed. I first heard about it when my brother came into my room wanting to play the PlayStation but ended up watching the television a bit instead. At first I thought it must have been the Queen Mother who had died, and when I found out it was only Princess Diana I struggled to see what the fuss was about. Never liked her.

Margaret Thatcher’s resignation – 22 November 1990

No recollection whatsoever. I did know of a time when Thatcher was Prime Minister, and I of course remember John Major being in charge. But I remember nothing of the transition.

Attack on the twin towers – 11 September 2001

I remember this very clearly. I was at school in my German Writing class. The first time I realised something was up was when the lesson hadn’t started after we had been sitting there for ten or fifteen minutes. Our teacher was constantly moving between the classroom and the staff room. I didn’t mind because German Writing was my least favourite subject at that time.

Eventually our teacher wheeled the television through and said, “I’m going to show you this because it’s very important and there will be a lot of consequences” (or words to that effect). I was a bit peeved that he chose ITN over the BBC, but never mind. One of my strongest memories is the fact that one certain person in our class particularly struggled to grasp what was happening. In retrospect, I suppose he was right to be so sceptical of the idea that people would be mad enough to delibrately crash planes into buildings.

Of course, we did not get any learning done in that class. Of course, not everyone’s teachers wheeled the television through like ours did. I suppose most teachers will have been completely oblivious. It was the major talking point among my classmates after school, but people from other classes thought we were tacking the mickey.

It was also strange going home, and I got the feeling that I could kind of tell who knew what was happening and who didn’t. I remember seeing a few people driving cars who obviously looked like they were listening to what was happening on the radio. When I got home my parents were both in the living room watching the television (my dad had the day off for some reason that I can’t remember). I carried on watching it for around two hours.

England’s World Cup Semi Final v Germany in – 4 July 1990

I have no recollection of this match in particular, but I was aware of Italia 90. I liked the mascot, ‘Ciao’! I also took in the design of the graphics used during the matches — an early example of my interest in television presentation.

President Kennedy’s Assassination – 22 November 1963

I was 23 years away from being born.

I now I need to decide who to tag:

• Onebrow
• Jack Deighton
• MatGB
• Colin Campbell
• Mr Eugenides

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.“

First of all, I need to get this pedantry out of the way. If it doesn’t have words, it isn’t a song. Now on to my seven songs and / or other pieces of music.

I’ve placed this ‘below the fold’ because I’ve embedded YouTube videos and Bleep audio. Remember with the Bleep audio you need to press play again after it fades out every 30 seconds.

1. Portishead — The Rip

   As with Chris, Portishead’s Third is, for me, the album of the year so far. Eleven years on from their last album, it was all set up to be a massive disappointment. But Third has turned out to be a real treat. It is a solid progression on the Portishead sound (without all the now-clichéd-sounding scratching) with a darker, more electronic feel in general.

   My favourite track is ‘The Rip’. When I first heard it I thought, this sounds like a Radiohead song. It sounds particularly like ‘Arpeggi/Weird Fishes’ from Radiohead’s last album, with those guitar-based arpeggios. Sure enough, they have covered it. Anyway, ‘The Rip’ is just a beautiful song that builds up really nicely and is my favourite song from the album.

2. The Focus Group — Hey Let Loose Your Love

   The Ghost Box record label has been my discovery of the summer. In fact, I am kicking myself for overlooking it in the first place, because I was well aware of its existence but I just never investigated it. But a recent edition of Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone podcast contained a Ghost Box showcase and I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer.

   The label has a strong identity — both visual and audio — that is a slightly off take on nostalgia. The genre of electronic music is known as ‘hauntology‘ or ‘memoradelia’ (I think I prefer the latter, although the former seems to be more common). Think about the skewed, hazy nostalgia of Boards of Canada — deteriorated cassettes, faded photographs and so on — or Look Around You without the comedy and you will be getting there.

   The Focus Group is a project of Julian House, famous for doing the artwork for Broadcast and Stereolab (he also co-runs and does all of the artwork for the Ghost Box label). His music has the same 1960s-influenced collage feel to it. This track is the title track and centrepiece of the Hey Let Loose Your Love mini-album. It’s the only release of The Focus Group that I have got my hands on so far, but I know I need to get more.

3. The Advisory Circle — Frozen Ponds PIF

   The other Ghost Box artist I’ve checked out so far is The Advisory Circle (who may be better known for his releases as King of Woolworths on Lo Recordings). The world of The Advisory Circle is a journey into a past dystopia where everyone is told what to do by the government through media such as public information films. The music also tinkers with ideas to do with television idents (a subject close to my heart as long-time readers will know) and suchlike.

   I really like the idea of making music inspired by public information films. PIFs are strange things that have to perform two conflicting roles — telling you about the dangers in the world while simultaneously assuring you that everything is safe because the government is looking after you. It fits in neatly with the Ghost Box aesthetic of dark, uneasy nostalgia.

   ‘Frozen Ponds PIF’ is not necessarily representative of The Advisory Circle’s output. It’s the only track that really fully recreates a PIF as it might sound in real life (although even this track is not entirely faithful, coming with cartoony electronic ‘danger’ sound in the middle). But it is perhaps for that reason that I like this track so much. That voice perfect recreates that paternal PIF narrator sound.

   This track is ‘Frozen Ponds PIF’, although it’s been incorrectly labelled by Bleep as ‘Erosion Of Time’. Remember, mind how you go.

4. Venetian Snares — Banana Seat Girl

   I have no idea why, but this track is stuck in my head all the time just now. It took me a while — years, infact — to get into Venetian Snares, but now I am a hardened convert. Here is a madcap piece of cartoony, jazzy breakcore.

5. Scott Walker — Angels of Ashes

   I got into Scott Walker when The Drift came out a couple of years ago. I thought it was a fascinating album, so I have been working my way backwards through his important albums. Tilt is excellent, one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. Climate of Hunter, it turns out, is not very good.

   Most recently I have bought Scott 4. It is a quite exquisite album. There are lots of great songs, but ‘Angels of Ashes’ stands out a bit more than the others for me.

   ‘Angels of Ashes’ at Last.fm

6. Delia Derbyshire — Blue Veils & Golden Sands

   I’ve also recently bought the first two volumes of the series of CDs entitled Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I have very little interest in Doctor Who, but I have a great deal of interest in electronic music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

   Delia Derbyshire is rightly regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music, having created one of the most famous pieces of electronic music in the world, the theme tune to Doctor Who. Apart from the theme tune, she didn’t do much music for the series though.

   But included in volume 2 is ‘Blue Veils & Golden Sands’. I already had this track on an earlier purchase, Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but its inclusion on the Doctor Who CD has reminded me of its eerie charms. A gentle gong-type sound begins this journey to an intriguing and exotic soundscape. A captivating piece of ambient music.

   ‘Blue Veils & Golden Sands’ at MySpace

7. Sia — Breathe Me (Four Tet remix)

   Another (belated) recent purchase was Four Tet’s Remixes album. At first my favourite track on the album was the Beth Orton remix, but this remix of Sia has grown on me a lot. I have no idea who Sia even is, but this I like Four Tet’s interpretation whatever.

I’m not even sure I’ll come up with seven people to tag. Here goes. Gordon, Laura, Calum, Mat, Pinksy, Ponzonha (I’ll crack open the old Google Translator specially to read it since my Spanish isn’t up to much ) and Clairwil.

By the way, I hate the number seven.

They’ve made a big fuss about how they are bringing back an institution, even though they killed if off in the first place so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the football or something. And they are making a big deal about how Trevor McDonald is back presenting it while keeping quiet about the fact that they spent years shunting him around various scheduling back-alleys in the ignominious “News at When?” days.

I don’t even get all of the fuss about Trevor McDonald. Everyone goes on about how he’s the country’s favourite newsreader. I don’t get it. His delivery is wooden and robotic. His is like one of those voices that blind people have to put up with on their screen readers on their computers. And have you ever seen him smile? I haven’t.

So if it seemed like his heart wasn’t in it originally, imagine what it must be like now! He thought he had finished with all of these late nights. Now he is being paid £1,633 per minute to deliver the news in his odd staccato drawl.

And that brings up the next thing that’s wrong with News at Ten. It is so painfully obvious that he refused to come on board if he had to do all the heavy lifting. So the bulletin is shared with Julie Etchingham. Presumably they couldn’t use Mark Austin (how pissed off must he be about all this?) because having two male presenters would be, like, so gaaay or something. As if doing it (the bulletin, I mean) with someone young enough to be your daughter is any less perverse.

But since when was the “heavyweight” late-night bulletin double-headed? This must be the first time it’s happened. I thought the point of having two people presenting the news was so that you could have all of that cringeworthy banter during the light moments, which is why until recently they had two people presenting the Six O’Clock Tabloid News, which is all light moments apart from the faux Daily Mail-style scaremongering bits at the start.

But News at Ten is not meant to have banter, except for the ‘and finally’ bit, but there is only one ‘and finally’ story so there’s not much space for banter there. No, Julie Etchingham is just there so that poor Trevor McDonald can save his breath. He now only speaks for around three minutes per programme apparently.

Then there is this monstrosity.

“This is the news!”

All I can say is, it must have been fun to be that timpani player.

ITV seem to think that reviving News at Ten would give them credibility, gravitas and prestige. But it has actually highlighted many of its major weaknesses. It’s just quick fix after sticking plaster.

Throw money at a problem. Bring in a big name star. Remix the theme tune to the point that it becomes self-parodying. Use overly-flashy computer graphics which make it look more like the deck of the USS Enterprise than a newsroom.

The fact is that ITV News is still rotten. It is focussed too much on gimmicks and sensationalism. It doesn’t matter how much of an ‘institution’ the title of the programme and its main anchor are. If the programme is rubbish, people will not watch it.

That is why by the third day of the new run of News at Ten it had lost a third of its viewers and remained over 2 million behind the BBC Ten O’Clock News. Which has no gimmicks at all.

But the important thing is that its idents are still awesome, as they always have been. It’s great to see that Channel 4′s continuity is all in the style of the original iconic designs, with a range of classic idents being shown (some of which I’ve never seen before).

The original idents lasted an astonishing 14 years. That’s an age — you’d never see an ident package lasting that long nowadays. Even more amazingly, the original ’4′ logo has never changed, merely being adapted for each new era.

The coloured blocks were well loved and recognisable enough for Hamlet to create this spoof version for an advert. For me, it’s surprising in two ways. For one, I’m surprised Channel 4 and the regulators allowed them to do it, given that it could have easily been confused for an actual ident.

Then there is the fact that it is tobacco being advertised — something from a different era. It goes to show just how far Hamlet were determined to advertise despite all the regulations. Sometimes a restrictive environment can make you come up with the best ideas.

It was always going to be a tough act to follow the coloured blocks. I seem to remember the circles era was quite unpopular, but I thought they were quite good.

I also liked the ‘squares and stripes’ era, although it dated really quickly.

So it was a bit of a shock to see just how excellent the following ident package was!

Genius.

Channel 4 have a couple of special websites up and running for the occasion as well.

• Channel 4 at 25
• Channel 4 News at 25

More classic Channel 4 idents can be found at The TV Room. BBC News Online has 25 facts about 25 years of Channel 4.