BBC iPlayer

The marketing people have actually been dropping the "BBC" off "iPlayer" in many instances for a couple of years now.

On BBC One, Two, and Four trails they only verbalise the "BBC" once. E.g. "...on BBC One and iPlayer". Also on end credit VOs it's usually only referred to as "iPlayer".

I'm not fussed on the all pink BBC iPlayer logo, but what really bugs me is the inconsistency between the trail branding and the branding on the app itself, where the BBC blocks are still white.

I've never quite got this BBC idea of the marketing powers that be wanting the "BBC" part of every brand to be present. It's not always a bad thing to have a strong sub-brand which stands on its own 2 feet without incorporating the parent.

Take the examples mentioned earlier; everyone knows iPhones are by Apple and Clubcard is a Tesco thing - I'd argue that everybody knows iPlayer is the BBC and News 24 was too. And just like denton mentioned above, the worst perpetrators of dropping "BBC" from "BBC News 24" were the BBC themselves - a practice which still persists in the newsroom today if I understand it, along with just "BBC World" rather than "BBC World News" - it's only been 12 years!

It's the same with the evening bulletins switching from the Six o'clock News and Ten o'clock News to be the BBC News at 6/10 but more often than not referred to as The Six and The Ten it appears.

Are you sure? I thought that deal was just for the HBO channel itself, not the streaming service.

Did the BBC make any edits to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air when it aired on BBC Two? I didn’t spot any unusual edits or cuts when it was on Netflix so I can’t do a comparison.

They used to move the titles, to make the show have a "warm opening" as opposed to the standard American style "cold opening".
A cold opening is where you go straight into a programme without any titles, and the warm is obviously with titles.

However Bel-Air wasn't unique in the BBC's approach to this. Malcolm In The Middle had the same approach done to it too. No doubt others too. Not entirely sure why they felt they had to do this.

Suspect it is/was a cultural thing - US audiences are used to very different presentation styles - with no channel idents before shows, shows having breaks more frequently and in unusual (to a UK audience eyes) locations - such as before the end credits etc. (And in the case of BBC audiences - apart from a strange BBC Three experiment - having any breaks at all!)

Times are changing - but I suspect UK audiences a decade or two ago were more used to shows starting with opening titles.

It may not even have been the BBC who did the re-edits. Sometimes international versions of US shows differ quite significantly from the original US broadcasts - particularly in titles and credits terms.

Yeah, things were changing by 2005 at least, because from episode 2 onwards, Doctor Who had a cold open, and it's 45 minute runtime was clearly designed to allow for ad breaks when aired in the US, which would make the show fill a one hour timeslot. Whereas in the 90s they were editing US shows to suit the UK, by the mid 2000s they were making UK shows in a way to suit the US!

I remember a repeat run of Star Trek in the 1990s (the original series) on either the BBC or Sky One had the opening titles moved to the start, which made for odd viewing when the inevitable cliffhanger ending to the cold open (cue dramatic OTT music) plunged straight into the episode title and writing credits, which often ran over William Shatner’s captains log narration.

NBC picked it up for Peacock. I can only assume based on that, that Sky will have first dibs.

But which Aunt Viv will they use? Unless they do a revival like Sabrina the Teenage Witch with totally different actors this time.

Oh, I've never heard of this.