TVF Confessions

A few more from me...

- ITV has never had a satisfactory corporate identity, probably exacerbated by their tendency to go from one extreme to the other.

- As with a few other members seemingly, I never understood the dislike of BBC Two's 'Windows on the World'.

- The current Sky News HQ is far nicer than the old Sky News Centre which was an awful dark mess of various shades of translucent plastic with an idiotically large video wall. In fact, all of Sky News' current branding is preferable to its recent predecessors which I'd typically describe as OTT, bordering on self-parody.

- More generally, I think we're currently going through a golden age of television news set and graphic design in the UK. It may just be my personal tastes, but I am enjoying the general air of minimalism and flat graphic design style on all fronts.

- BBC election coverage leaves a lot to be desired. There are too many gimmicks and too much focus on politicians delivering predictable talking points. I want more analysis, more results and, maybe just speaking as a fellow political scientist, more Curtice. The whole thing could be done with just two presenters (a main host and an analyst) and no VR/AR graphics.

- If I was to rate all of David Lowe's BBC News packages, they would disproportionately fall within the last 10 years.

- I wouldn't be that bothered if BBC News and BBC World News merged for evenings and early mornings, so long as 0900-1800 was kept separate. I've also never understood the point in simulcasting the Six or Ten if you aren't going to bother signing them.

- Despite many Gallery designs showing the opposite, I think it's right that only BBC Two uses a numeral as a symbol. The '1' is too simple to ever work as a symbol and any attempt to jazz up the '4' just comes off like a rip-off of Channel 4.


And as a BBC News studio geek...

- I'm glad that the NBH sets will be around for a good few years to come - they are still looking good after nearly a decade, do their job well and are possibly my favourite set of sets of all time.

- None of the cream and red era sets looked much good until the late-2001/2002 refurbs. The 1999 N6 set was particularly bland and I've never understood the affection for the baked bean can/figure of eight desk (why did the main presenter get the smaller circle?).

- The BARCO sets weren't a bad idea, just poorly executed in most cases. Marr (and sometimes Newsnight) used TC7 well and N6 was vastly improved after 2008.

- The TC7 style regional news sets were/are (with a few exceptions) actually quite nice - possibly better than the national news sets of the time.

Yeah I think BBC Two should be the only one having a sort of "2" symbol, while I think BBC should strengthen its corporate identity there should also be individual difference among channels.

And I think Windows of the World was a decent package, at least before BBC decided to butcher it up to replacing it with the original 2 package, which clearly was a mistake for me, even if I still love those idents

Its a shame Carlton didn't try something similar with Westcountry

My time to shine:

I never really liked the 1991–2001 BBC Two idents.

As for me, I hated the circle era of the Channel 4 idents.

How dare you!

The HTV/Carlton idents were much better than the actual Carlton idents:



I've seen a lot of critiques claiming the transition is awkward but I always thought it was clever to use the V as the linking device. The animation of the box was neat and bespoke to the style of each ident, and above all the three note melody is perfect for a three syllable name.

Agree with pretty much everything DTV has said.



I think one person doing graphics/stats would be understandable, but there seem to be 3 now - one person in the full-on virtual world, another at a screen then someone with the short straw outside putting hexagons on the floor. I never understand what difference there is supposed to be between the 2 graphics people and the map thing has always seemed utterly pointless to me - especially since the graphics usually have a virtual version of exactly the same thing.



Yes, they got better with tweaking and improvements to the gaps/alignment issues at launch but I'm not sure I agree N6 was vastly improved in 2008, but I think that's just my dislike of the static grey backdrop from that era. I will never understand why they went from black titles/bright set from 2003 - 2007 to white titles/dark set from 2008 - 2013.

an ITV-Channel4-Channel5 merger would have been a good thing

I like the "five" idents from 2002-2008.

Simple, but straight to the point.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, or whether a lot of people quietly agree with me, but here goes.

News presentation here in the UK is a bit crap.

I'm not going to deny that they do the job for each channel. However, when compared to other countries, ours have recently felt quite drab and uninspired. It seems like everywhere else in the world, you'll find augmented reality, minimalist graphics, music that isn't a remix of the previous iteration, and presenters that aren't either standing by a screen, or sitting at a desk.

And on the rare occasion when something fresh is introduced, it'll seemingly only last a couple of weeks, before going back to how they were before. What will it take for British broadcasters to push the boat out a bit?

I know it's not what should dictate your choice in news outlet, but I've found BBC News to be terribly stale and robotic for a long time. If I need to leave a rolling news channel on, I'll default to Sky only because (please forgive me) it's prettier.

It'll never stop bugging me how their graphics put a person's name underneath who they are/what they do though.