Have they murdered BBC Two?

I always used to think water was a wavy ribbon.

Yeah - the new idents are awful... the idents needed a change, but the new idents are... well, horrid.  

I never knew what that 'Water' one was.

(Edited by Paul B at 7:24 pm on Jan. 13, 2002)

How could you not notice that water it's so obvious!

I never really put much thought into it, it wasn't one that I would particularyly notice which was alright but these new ones are so repetative and annoying. Logo and Domino are half decent but need more of a variation, Bounce is bloody annoying and Fish is the only one that features 'real' items which is wierd. Martin its not [just] the box we hate its the IDENTS, just because other channels will have been ruined it won't make us like these anymore.

Without doubt, the best summation of that ident there is!

the old idents were better for one reason.

varitity.

There were 30 or so of the things, the new ones simply don't have this and the old ones had been there so long that they didn't feel dated, they felt comforting.

[/wierd nostalgic mode]

I'm suprised there is anyone who likes the dull BBC2 ients. Some of the 1991 originals don't look dated now, the November 2001 idents looked dated after 1 week.

Both of the '2' looks have tried to do the same thing, have a unifying personality throughout all of the idents. So why was the 1991 look a roaring success and the 2001 version generally considered a spectacular failure?

Perhaps it was cost - this new look has clearly been done very much on the cheap side - perhaps because it was very rushed. New 2's had allready been introduced in 2001, at £30,000 a piece, clearly this time last year they hadn't decided to rebrand BBC2, or if they had, certainly not so extensively (I think maybe the box idea was going to be implemented in the old idents, and then they thought lets go for a complete new look).

Perhaps it was what they replaced. The 1991 look replaced a single rather boring silent 'TWO' ident which the public generally felt to be dull and dated wheras the 2001 look replaced the most succesful channel identity ever which by now had amassed over 30 idents, the majority of which were brilliant.

Perhaps it was the sheer lack of and variety, both in terms of sheer volume, and differences between them. The 1991 look launched with 11 idents in an era when most channels had 1, or 2 if they were lucky (Central excepted). The 2001 look launched with 4 in an era when 11 is considered a pretty standard number. The 11 original 2's still had quite a bit of variety in them, they all had different ideas (neon, blade, water etc.) and there were quite a few different jingles (and all very good). But all the current ones are nothing more than a 2 bouncing around all over the place to the same dull as ditchwater 'dah-dah-dit-dah' jingle.

The basic mission statement of the new 2's was the same I think as the old one: to build a common identity throughout all the idents, instead of having wildly differing themes (oh and this time they added on some 'adding personality' crap to explain why they couldn't just withdraw some of the more exotic variations of the old 2's instead).

The original 2's all had a common look (the blue colour) and were audibly similiar. Many of the jingles were based on other jingles in the set, some were exactly the same jingles, almost all of them had at least some common elements (although blade was the only one I can think of which made a complete departure) and yet they were all still different in their own way. Paint, Silk, and Sign had common elements, but could not be described as being 'similar', but despite that it was clear that they were part of the same set.

Even when they changed the colours and/or jingle design on the later designs, the common ground between them all wasn't lost. Only the really far out designs like Kebab and Fly Trap (don't know the proper name) were awful and completely unrelated except for the logo, these were the ones which should've been dropped.

Now lets look at the new 2's. We currently have 4 of them, OK they say that more will be added and in time some will be dropped just as the old ones were, but why so few now? It's almost a third less than the last look launched with and that was in a time when 4 idents would be very impressive and extravagent (unless you happened to watch Central of course). 4 nowadays is feeble for a 'main' channel.

If there was some variety in them it may have been better. The only one had COMMON LINKS but the new ones really are almost identical. They all have exactly the same yellow background and exactly the same pale yellow 2. The jingle may have subtle differences but when you aren't intimately familiar with it and don't have the others there at the same time to compare to, it sounds exactly the same. The differences in animation are too muted too. OK, having one version with the purple box flipping around, another with dominoes, another with fish and another just bouncing all over the place may sound like a lot of variation but really they all still look pretty similar. I don't think I'd notice if two programmes were introduced by the same ident, unless I was specifically watching out for it.

And finally, taking the focus off of the two and putting it onto a purple box has made BBC2 begin to sink into the world of non descript text based logos. Ten years ago you new you were watching BBC2 because a big stylised 2 was animating on the screen. They clearly realised this, by only having 'BBC' at the bottom of the ident. In 1997 it was suddenly decided that it must say 'BBC TWO' but this was probably only because the balloons on BBC1 had 'BBC ONE' at the bottom to make it look common.

As the same 2 animations were used it didn't really matter that much.

But now we have a yellow background and a yellow two, there isn't sufficient contrast there. What does contrast is the yellow background & 2 and the purple box.

And the way the BBC lettering is tiny and the TWO lettering huge, I think when you think of BBC2 now, you're not supposed to think 'big animating 2' I think you're supposed to think 'purple box with TWO in it'.

For that reason, I think the new look of 2 (and all the BBC channels, if they're all going down the box route) is a mess.

I have to agree that it wasn't until about a year ago irealised what was going on with 'water' - I too thought it was a sheet of silk. As to the size difference, well it wasn't that noticable. That was what made the old '2's so good was the subtlety. There was room to disagree and explore them.

Was it water or a sheet of silk? Was that shaddow cast by a 2 cut out of paper or some kind of children's mobile? Whose bath was that rubber-duck 2 in? What was the 2 made of that it reacted so violently when it came into contact with those water droplets? And so on.

The new ones are flat, lack substance, and as for bounce - it doesn't even flow - the 2 seems to be in totally the wrong position the second time it falls into view, relative to where and at what angle it bounced out (it that makes any sense) - And the way Logo has to make you aware of the big box is channel branding at its most self-conscious and clumsy.

Not when they were first introduced there weren't!!!!!

There were only about nine IIRC. More got gradually introduced over the years. There were some withdrawals too (e.g. balloon, glass) but the rate of withdrawals was far outweighed by new additions.

There is no reason to suspect that the number of yellow 2s won't start increasing in the not-too-distant future just like their predecessors did!!!!!

I quite like them, although they should have introduced more idents.

Plus any major change will make loads of people hate the replacement.

BTW I dont think idents exactly murder a channel...

(Edited by Pete Davis at 10:53 am on Jan. 14, 2002)

Launching more new idents will help to some extent but we will still be left with the problem that the idents look cheap, fake and with no real character, even though that is the point of them replacing the old ones.