South West England & CI Thread

BBC and LN align, so why the hell do EAST YORKSHIRE & LINCOLNSHIRE feel like an afterthought, it's a designers dream to have letters line up when stacked, especially when they could have made the SHIRE parts align perfectly.

It looks better with BBC Reith.

Surely a large part of the reason for generic instrumental radio jingles/beds is because into the evening the truly local output is replaced by all-England and/or multi-station pan-regional output? It allows the 'station sound' to remain consistent, regardless of the schedule shifting between 'truly local' and 'shared' programmes.

Truly local radio jingles generally rely on having the same number of musical notes in the main jingle motif as the number of syllables in the station name, so that the station name can be sung along to the jingle. As there is great variation in the length of station names - from short & sweet (e.g. "BBC Sussex") to cumbersome (e.g. "BBC Coventry & Warwickshire") - a purely instrumental jingle that has the station name spoken over the music bed but not sung in time with each note is the most practical solution.

I personally like the generic radio package. The main 3-note motif subliminally implies the 3 letters "BBC" but without literally having someone singing "Bee, bee, ceee" along to it (thankfully).

Though I’ve only just realised the ‘w’ in the official version lines up exactly with the BBC logo, so don’t blame me for not doing that with my very rough mock-up.

It was never an issue before where the evening output had their own jingles, and in a way it doesn't really matter anymore. BBC Radio Cornwall have kept the old package from 2011, whilst others,including Radio Devon have the 2016 package.

Visual branding maybe. The local stations haven't even completed the last audio rebrand

Radio Cornwall changed over to the new jingle package last month; overall ten stations remain that are still using the pre-2015 jingles.



Going slightly off-track, although BBC Sussex itself is not a cumbersome name, most of the time the presenters have to say 'BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey', which is rather cumbersome, although the jingles themselves are almost always split between the two.



In fact there is a vocal version of the jingle in the 2015 package which sings 'B-B-C', which I've heard on Radio Berkshire!

The old package had different versions, and a station would pick the version based on the amount of syllables in the station name. For example, my local station had: B-B-C Ra-Di-O Der-By B-B-C (Not sung however). You can hear parts of the package(s) here: http://mcasso.com/music-by-mcasso/bbc-local-radio-compilation/



For anybody who hasn't heard the new jingles: http://mcasso.com/music-by-mcasso/bbclr/

When BBC Surrey refreshed their Mcasso jingles a couple of years ago they briefly used a news intro with the wrong number of syllables - it was the six note version rather than the five note version - but it was corrected within a couple of days.

You would have thought that something as big as that would be picked up before they made it to air.

Radio Sheffield have recently moved to the version which sings B-B-C.

I wonder why they don't use the split jingles facility overnight to add the right station name to 5 Live's imaging?

Lucy Martin has just done the lunchtime weather forecast live in the Spotlight studio. Think it's the first time she hasn't done a pre-record in front of a green screen on Spotlight.