I am currently doing a project researching TV idents and how they influence viewers. Could you please answer what you think an ident is and any side notes or comments about them.
I am currently doing a project researching TV idents and how they influence viewers. Could you please answer what you think an ident is and any side notes or comments about them.
Well, I'm sure that helped. But bear in mind that the Westward Galleon was the most valuable asset they had left when they lost the franchise. And the Anglia Knight is solid silver and worth a tad more than a stuffed Panda.
But to answer your question - do you think the TV companies would spend so little ...er, much on them if the didn't influence viewers?
(BTW: An IDENT is there to IDENTIfy the channel you're watching, whereas a LOGO is there to tell you who made the programme.)
I have this theory that they have just stuck around because people thought they were needed back in the day and nobody's ever thought to change things.
But I don't work in television pres or marketing, and Tony very much does, so ignore anything I say...
I have this theory that they have just stuck around because people thought they were needed back in the day and nobody's ever thought to change things.
But I don't work in television pres or marketing, and Tony very much does, so ignore anything I say...
I'm sure if there was a superior way of introducing a programme, it would be used by now. In many ways presentation has stayed the same since those early days, but it's also changed a lot. Remember holding slides and menus? Clocks have also gone, although I presume that's because of the digital delay more than anything.
These were all elements that were still used only 15 years ago, into the early years of digital broadcasting - which gives me a brilliant excuse to link to this fab upload of a BBC Two junction from 1999, recorded from digital widescreen in broadcast quality. (No menu but there is a programme slide).
Whilst we're on the subject of changes to presentation in general, are there many instances these days where the announcer just says "This is BBC One", apart from before party political/election broadcasts?
I can't find the current OFCOM version, but it was certainly a requirement in ITC days to have something between adverts and the programme, to separate the two, and a station ident is one way to do that.
Idents are (or have been) used in a few different ways:
Out of Vision Continuity
Something to fill the screen while the announcer talks. The BBC globes are the classic example. Known as a 'symbol' in BBC parlance, even now.
Frontcap
I would speculate that the practice of the ITV companies putting an ident before the programmes they made was a continuation of the cinema practice (MGM Lion, Rank gong etc)
In and out of breaks
To separate the programmes and adverts
Idents are basically the radio jingles of telly. They aid brand recognition and create the character of the station (think of the '2's for example). They also allow a change of pace - one of the more sombre idents can get a channel like BBC Two from a comedy programme into a serious documentary without it jarring too much. (Much like a transition jingle between songs with vastly different tempos).
In the good old days of ITV, they had a technical purpose too. Back in those days, each programme came from a different source, potentially. For example, let's say that Tyne Tees were taking Emmerdale Farm from Yorkshire followed by World in Action from Granada. After Emmerdale had finished, they would play in their adverts. If they went straight to the feed from Granada there would be a nasty frame roll - a non sync cut.
TV studios have a sync pulse generator (often several, in fact) to which all of the equipment is connected. This means that they all start the 625 lines of the picture at the same time, so you can cut or mix between them cleanly. However you couldn't synchronise a feed from an outside source to your SPG back then, so you had to do it the other way round, gently tweak the SPG to match the outside source (in this example, the feed from Granada). This was done by adding or subtracting a couple of lines to each frame until it was in the right place.
If you tried to do that with a VT or telecine and it really wouldn't like it. Trying to do that with a VT or telecine that is playing your ads (eg earning the station's income) may have been a career limiting move. But cameras could cope to gentle tweaking. So there would be either an in vision announcer, a clock, slide or ident, produced from a camera, before the programme to give a few seconds to shift the sync pulses so that the transition to the network programme was synchronous and wasn't a mess.
Incidentally, if you want to see how TV without idents (in the conventional sense) looked, take a look on TV ark for some early 1980s Yorkshire TV - they used programme slides rather than an ident for a long time.
:-(
A former member
Remember back in the day and every during the 90s, a number of station never used the ident, I think many just pushed out an promo and then straight into the programme.
Of course some of those promo just had the company logo on it
Quote:
but it was certainly a requirement in ITC days to have something between adverts and the programme, to separate the two, and a station ident is one way to do that.
Is that really true? STv were very good at pushing out last advert and going straight into main evening news. There was STV logo in the front of the titles.
but it was certainly a requirement in ITC days to have something between adverts and the programme, to separate the two, and a station ident is one way to do that.
Is that really true? STv were very good at pushing out last advert and going straight into main evening news. There was STV logo in the front of the titles.
I think the key requirement was, and still is, a clear distinction between programmes and adverts. How you did this was up to the broadcasters, but typically came to pass to be an ident or a trailer or whatever.
