Egg in the Sky

My first time starting a thread that isn't a mock... Here goes nothing.

I decided to take a good look at Sky's 1997 channel look - and I've heard that apparently people didn't like it.

Sky Sports, provided as an example:



I'd like to talk about that - What was it about this particular look that people did/didn't like?

Sky themselves didn't like it apparently. Sky One rebranded again after only seven months!

It was certainly bad compared to the second tombstone era which it replaced. However, they proved how bland they could really get only 7 months later.

Sky One adopted some random video footage with an uninspiring logo slapped on top. Inexplicably, that look lasted for 4 years.

The Sky egg logo had been used in corporate promotions well before November 1997. I remember when the channels were rebranded, I was disappointed by the identities of the channels themselves. Whilst the tombstones were used on all channels, they all had their own themes and looked great on screen. In hindsight whilst the branding was clear and looked smart, it didn’t do anything, the restrictions in the format were there.

Back in the mid 1990s it wasn’t uncommon that Sky rebranded their channels every 1 to 2 years on average, but it said a lot about that presentation when Sky One got a new logo in less than eight months from the egg branding being introduced. The gradual 1998 branding showed what Sky were capable of producing, see Sky Premier for that argument alone.

Going by the example in the first video, I wonder why Sky One was the only channel where the ident 'ended' and the logo moved to the top left whilst the background action continued close up. Was that used for a menu or something I wonder, or was it a separate style that only applied to Sky One?

Well obviously a lot of 'Sky' would have liked it otherwise it would never have been introduced in the first place

The idents were only like this in the evening to allow the continuity announcer to voice over what was coming up. During the day or when there was no announcer, the ident just ended without the logo moving to the top left and continuing. Sky One was the only channel that did this with their idents. Sports, Cinema and News had programme line ups before their respective idents. Sky Sports was the only one that used an announcer for this I believe.

I guess perhaps the 'egg' was essentially supposed to be an evolution of the space at the top of the tombstone containing the Sky logo.



To me, it just didn't really work as well. Later in 1998 even the corporate and channel logos began to diverge, which didn't unify again until 2008/2009 with the lower case sky logo.

I always assumed it was a satellite dish, not an egg 😳

Each of the Sky logos of that era were essentially an evolution of the last:

- The 1989 logo was just the “Sky” from the 1984 Sky Channel logo with a circle around it.
- The 1993 logo was virtually identical to the 1989 one with the tail of the “Y” straightened.
- The 1995 logo took the rectangle in the 1993 channel logos and merged the Sky logo into it, making it a “tombstone”.
- As pointed out above, the 1997 logo is basically an inverse video of the 1995 one with 3D added.

What might amaze people today is that not only did Sky change it’s corporate logo that frequently, but each time it did the entire suite of Sky branded channels got a complete makeover overnight (and that’s not counting 1996, where the logo didn’t change but all the channels got redone idents with different music and animation).

In fairness though they didn't have anywhere as many channels then as they do now.

In 1997 they only had three movie channels for a start, three Sky Sports channels, Sky One, Soap, News and a handful of others. It would have been easier to effectively rebrand the entire operation overnight as a lot of these (particularly Sky Sports 2 and whatever else it shared with) didn't broadcast all day every day.

These days it understandably takes a lot longer. More channels, more brands, more "separate" looks/name (like Challenge for example). Probably more challenging to do it all overnight, probably not impossible but probably far easier to stagger it.