TV Home Forum

New look UKTV Gold

(April 2007)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
JO
Jonny
Paul Clark posted:
bee bee see posted:
cylon6 posted:
bee bee see posted:
The idents first went downhill in 2002 when they started doing all the live action shots of things like a bath being filled with water, a kettle boiling or a bakery's window. They were cheap and meaningless - nothing whatsoever to do with Gold.

The logo from 1997 was alright, even if it was almost exactly the same as the BBC one, but that went in 2001 to a different one, and then to rename it UKTV Gold? Stupid.

The schedule started off well in 1992 when they were showing older programmes from BBC and ITV, many not shown at all now. For the 1997 revamp, a lot of those were dropped and emphasis was put on comedy repeats (Fawlty Towers, Porridge, Only Fools and Horses etc.) and though not as good, it got more viewers and was quite successful. That was until about 2002 again, when they were showing more modern programmes which had just been given an airing on the BBC anyway.

The gold stripes/bars weren't great either, and neither are the space hoppers. Goldie was the first sort of element of Gold in an ident, being an animated Golden Retriever, then it was stylish gold bars, and after that it was fireworks, which I still think are good.


Live action idents are awful and I don't know how TV bosses get talked into thinking they'd be good for their channel. I'm with you on UK Gold's idents being good up to the fireworks, what came afterwards was utterly depressing and soulless. The idents peaked for me when they used the gold bar, some excellent idents in that package. Not sure about these space hoppers at all.


Only one reason - money. Easy to produce and easy to show. Computer generated fireworks or gold bars now cost money, so they won't do it. Shame on them.


Surely if saving money was a factor we'd still have the old 'gold screen' idents which disappeared the other day.

I don't think the 'cheap' option applies to BBC anyway. Just from memory, I think it was £800K for the Dancers, but over £1mil for the current Circles. But they still have an element of live action, and aren't really that great. That's not to say live action is the reason for the poor quality - look at the BBC ONE Ballet dancers; that worked because it was shot right and the music was spot on to convey the right mood. And the balloon itself prior to that was live action business.

So I think what we're getting at here, is live action with people doesn't *tend* to work too well unless there's a) some level of physical skill and grace as opposed to just some people pratting about and b) it's backed with the right music, that's polished, varied and tailored to fit the scene.

Neither of the above apply to the new UKTV Gold lot. I think it looks a tad amateurish, in comparison to what came before and also compared to what other pres we have across the channels these days. Nothing wrong with a bit of comedic value, but lacking visual polish isn't a requisite of that.

You just have to look at BBC2.

IMO the best idents are Mirror and Zoetrope which feature no people.

IMO the worst idents are Chase and Tent which feature (surprise, surprise) people.

I agree that sometimes people idents work well (the balloon-esque Skateboards ident from the BBC1 dancers era springs to mind) but most of the time they look awful and amatuer.
IS
Inspector Sands
bee bee see posted:
The idents first went downhill in 2002 when they started doing all the live action shots of things like a bath being filled with water, a kettle boiling or a bakery's window. They were cheap and meaningless - nothing whatsoever to do with Gold.


They were to do with the UK though - they were traditional images of everyday britishness. I'd agree, very cheap and not very good

You're forgetting the golden apples/golden arrows identity from the relaunch in 1997.... they weren't very good
GL
Gluben
Paul Clark posted:
bee bee see posted:
cylon6 posted:
bee bee see posted:
The idents first went downhill in 2002 when they started doing all the live action shots of things like a bath being filled with water, a kettle boiling or a bakery's window. They were cheap and meaningless - nothing whatsoever to do with Gold.

The logo from 1997 was alright, even if it was almost exactly the same as the BBC one, but that went in 2001 to a different one, and then to rename it UKTV Gold? Stupid.

The schedule started off well in 1992 when they were showing older programmes from BBC and ITV, many not shown at all now. For the 1997 revamp, a lot of those were dropped and emphasis was put on comedy repeats (Fawlty Towers, Porridge, Only Fools and Horses etc.) and though not as good, it got more viewers and was quite successful. That was until about 2002 again, when they were showing more modern programmes which had just been given an airing on the BBC anyway.

The gold stripes/bars weren't great either, and neither are the space hoppers. Goldie was the first sort of element of Gold in an ident, being an animated Golden Retriever, then it was stylish gold bars, and after that it was fireworks, which I still think are good.


Live action idents are awful and I don't know how TV bosses get talked into thinking they'd be good for their channel. I'm with you on UK Gold's idents being good up to the fireworks, what came afterwards was utterly depressing and soulless. The idents peaked for me when they used the gold bar, some excellent idents in that package. Not sure about these space hoppers at all.


Only one reason - money. Easy to produce and easy to show. Computer generated fireworks or gold bars now cost money, so they won't do it. Shame on them.


Surely if saving money was a factor we'd still have the old 'gold screen' idents which disappeared the other day.

I don't think the 'cheap' option applies to BBC anyway. Just from memory, I think it was £800K for the Dancers, but over £1mil for the current Circles. But they still have an element of live action, and aren't really that great. That's not to say live action is the reason for the poor quality - look at the BBC ONE Ballet dancers; that worked because it was shot right and the music was spot on to convey the right mood. And the balloon itself prior to that was live action business.

So I think what we're getting at here, is live action with people doesn't *tend* to work too well unless there's a) some level of physical skill and grace as opposed to just some people pratting about and b) it's backed with the right music, that's polished, varied and tailored to fit the scene.

Neither of the above apply to the new UKTV Gold lot. I think it looks a tad amateurish, in comparison to what came before and also compared to what other pres we have across the channels these days. Nothing wrong with a bit of comedic value, but lacking visual polish isn't a requisite of that.


Yeah I think you've got it exactly right. I wasn't too clear with my analysis. But all the terrestrial channels now have live action idents. Where's the variety?
G4
G4
Ben posted:
They're not brilliant, but they're better than the previous set. So many people fail to understand UK Gold, it's not an archive channel and never really has been, it's always shown old programmes but has always shown fairly recent programmes, us movies and from time to time US programming.

They even had Degrassi Junior High at 4.30 every weekday from the beginning! And current productions of old plays.

This whole argument is stupid. This thread should be to discuss the idents ONLY .
IS
Inspector Sands
bee bee see posted:

Only one reason - money. Easy to produce and easy to show. Computer generated fireworks or gold bars now cost money, so they won't do it. Shame on them.


In terms of cost there probably isn't much diffrence between shooting live action and knocking something up on a computer, in fact a shoot would probably be more expensive, especially taking into account the post production tweaking.... on a computer

There are trends in such things. In the 80's all TV stations saw Channel 4 and copied them by getting their logo, digitising it, making it shiney and spinning it round. Computer generated logos became dull and cliched.

Then when the first live action idents came along everyone saw them and thought they were fresh and original and copied them just like they did 20 years ago to C4.

I think part of the problem these days is that a pure computer animation just looks a bit cheap and dull, The channel 4 and now BBC 1/2 way of taking something real and manipulating it using computer looks like it'll be the next 'thing' - it looked very fresh and original when C4 launched them
GL
Gluben
Inspector Sands posted:
bee bee see posted:
The idents first went downhill in 2002 when they started doing all the live action shots of things like a bath being filled with water, a kettle boiling or a bakery's window. They were cheap and meaningless - nothing whatsoever to do with Gold.


They were to do with the UK though - they were traditional images of everyday britishness. I'd agree, very cheap and not very good

You're forgetting the golden apples/golden arrows identity from the relaunch in 1997.... they weren't very good


I did mention them in my edited post, and it doesn't matter too much if they're not UK, it's the Gold element that should stand out - don't forget that old American shows are shown as well.

I thought the apples/arrows idents were quite good actually because they were simple and said everything about how Gold the channel was. But the fireworks were the best for me, even if the only Gold ones were for the millennium.
GL
Gluben
Inspector Sands posted:
I think part of the problem these days is that a pure computer animation just looks a bit cheap and dull, The channel 4 and now BBC 1/2 way of taking something real and manipulating it using computer looks like it'll be the next 'thing' - it looked very fresh and original when C4 launched them


The problem is, they don't always do it that well. The 4 idents are alright, but not a patch on the Blocks. Of course they are very 80s, but they still look good today in my opinion.
IS
Inspector Sands
russnet posted:
On a different note, I found an old freebie brouchure that came free with the Sunday Mirror Newspaper promoting the launch of UK Gold in 1992. It also includes a weekly schedule when it all so different.

All scanned pages can be found here


All looked very good at the time, but I wonder how that schedule would stand up these days?

Bearing in mind the fact that something like Dallas would be on it's hundreth repeat by now and how tastes have changed in the last 15 years (would anyone really want to watch Bread or Terry & June these days?).

Apart from the change of ownership, it has evolved into what we have today by getting rid of the stuff that viewers didn't like and bringing in popular stuff.

It's interesting to look at what it was but things move on. UK Gold is no diffrent to any other TV station - it would be the same looking at launch schedules for Channel 5, MTV, Bravo, BBC2, Discovery etc
IS
Inspector Sands
bee bee see posted:

I thought the apples/arrows idents were quite good actually because they were simple and said everything about how Gold the channel was. But the fireworks were the best for me, even if the only Gold ones were for the millennium.


The problem with the apples/arrows for me was that they seemed like an afterthought to fit in with the UKTV theme of 2 sides of a line (remember that Style, Horizons and Arena had idents with a line across the middle of the screen dividing or reflecting something)

The fireworks were good, and very universal, I prefered the original set (which the line and rebounding across the screen) rather than the second (which made patterns)
PC
Paul Clark
bee bee see posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
I think part of the problem these days is that a pure computer animation just looks a bit cheap and dull, The channel 4 and now BBC 1/2 way of taking something real and manipulating it using computer looks like it'll be the next 'thing' - it looked very fresh and original when C4 launched them


The problem is, they don't always do it that well. The 4 idents are alright, but not a patch on the Blocks. Of course they are very 80s, but they still look good today in my opinion.


I can't disagree with that - Original C4 is to current C4 as the original 2s are to the current 2s.

Yes, it's more modern nowadays but it feels like it's lost a huge great chunk of the charm that the classic counterparts had.

This sort of falls into the 'less is more' ideal I've had for some time now. And in the case of the classic Blocks I think it's obvious enough: brightly (multi)coloured symbol made to stand out on a black background never fails to make an impact, add to that the iconic jingle (which sadly doesn't seem to have been alluded to in any recent incarnations) and I can see why some people still see it as superior - I'm somewhat inclined to agree with them.

Such a shame you don't get idents like that anymore, which seem to make more of an impact in their first few frames *because* they were so stark and would err on the side of the old school, rather than something overly busy from the get-go that usually has the opposite effect and falls flat.


Take ITV2's idents for example, which appropriately are meant to show extremes - but visually what jumps out at you more: the first couple of seconds from their Too Fast ident, or the first couple of seconds of BBC 2's 1997 Paint Pot ident?

Some folks might not think it, but the latter is much, much more captivating to me.
HA
harshy Founding member
Inspector Sands posted:


I think part of the problem these days is that a pure computer animation just looks a bit cheap and dull, The channel 4 and now BBC 1/2 way of taking something real and manipulating it using computer looks like it'll be the next 'thing' - it looked very fresh and original when C4 launched them


Not really now i'm thinking Central Cake idents, they weren't dull, they were always inspiring, the endcap from the late 80s still look classy today some 20 years on!

The real problem is those overpaid designers just don't have what the previous generation had, that's imagination!

Newer posts