BBC Two 50th Year Presentation

That bit of info is from MHP, although looking at the page again (for the first time in a long time), it actually says 'presumably'. So it probably wasn't the reason then!



http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/identzone/bbc2/bbc2_91beengone.html


EDIT: Actually, that video is interesting because it's a different edit of the ident. In fact, it starts 20 seconds earlier than the version that went out on air:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKLelWJzi-s

Maybe this was the reason why it was removed, because it was much shorter than the rest of the idents which meant if the announcement went on for particularly long it would be cut off?

Balloon was given a similar treatment to Car; it was used on-air playing from that first frame proper to start with (IIRC there are some recordings of this around - the original start point was definitely being used in 1994), then the edit from the mid-point was produced a little later on.

For Car this was the point where the '2' lines itself up squarely with the camera and centred, so seemed to be a visual decision... With Balloon, I guess the flute trill in the soundtrack was considered a nicer / more distinct point to start the music from.


For years I'd wondered why Balloon was apparently the only regular symbol without the signature viridian colour in the scene... Until I noticed it was there - on the ribbon attached to the balloon. I think a mixture of the obscuration from the BBC logo, and VHS (especially the colour definition) meant that just didn't translate well - unless they wanted it to be really subtle, that is.

That makes sense, which makes you wonder why for the 1997 transfer they went back to the original starting point.

(For completeness, here's a copy of the edited version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdDxItiMg6s )

Apparently not, it's been used 3 times so far today, at 11am, midday, and at 6pm before Eggheads. Now it's only Kebab that appears to have been used just the once.

That has come as a surprise but its nice to see we will now have more mixture.

Yeh, I noticed that this morning, just to shut me up I'm sure.

Still holding out for Steam on network. We can all but hope.

I wouldn't bet on it. Network isn't known for making an effort.

One thing I noticed was that from 1998 onward's (and this is just pure speculation), the announcements used to mostly start about 5 or so seconds into the ident (although were shorter), which left room for a form up to most idents (as also seen with the balloon idents on BBC1), whereas back when holding slides usually preceded the ident, the announcement would start almost immediately, meaning that they probably had to choose a point of the ident where there was already action going on.

The CA mentioned on BBC Two that "even the BBC Two Dog can dance" (referring to the new BBC One show promo previously ) yet as its the 10yrs+ old dog!

More like, "even our BBC TWO dog can do gymnastics".