[Neil Jones]

Not sure it's a myth, it was certainly in evidence last April for the DoE obit

tvhome.co.uk 

I wonder if the DofE idents that were used from the Saturday onward were knocked up at very short notice. Otherwise why not use them on the day itself?

They definitely weren’t knocked up in a weekend - someone found them hidden in the Sky Q software a few years before.

They weren't unique to Sky Q...
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(I never had Sky Q, just Sky+HD, and as I wrote there I could see the idents. They'd obviously been pushed to the Sky boxes (Q and HD+) presumably via the Anytime feature) at some point, though Sky had publicly scrapped Anytime in favour of on-demand/catch-up about a decade or so ago but since those boxes upgrade via satellite there's clearly still a download route available.

But yes, they weren't a "oh heavens the DoE's dead, let's slap something together" job. And I don't think they're part of the box software either - the hard drives in Sky boxes hold far more than stuff you've recorded yourself.

[Steve in Pudsey]

I don't know if this was posted elsewhere but a nice slide was shown on Sunday, in the style of the Royal presentation.


It makes the menu shown for the first couple of days a curious odd one out - its design harking back to '97, being centred with the logo at the bottom. The very sombre grey style almost generic, as if it could be for any royal. 

And no appearance of a family ident then. Presumably one exists in case of other Category 1 events but not something we've see as part of this due to the bespoke ident for the Queen running from the off.

You'd almost be forgiven for thinking the purple ident, menu and trail board didn't exist on the day the Queen died. Mmmm.

I guess they are being used for different purposes. On the day itself the menu was really there to flag up schedule changes (I guess particularly for those of us with non dynamic EPGs).

The later purple example was more like the standard now and next elements.

[Si-Co]

Were the purple idents and presentation really appropriate on the day of the death though, when the nation was in shock and mourning? You could argue that later the mood was as much celebrating the Queen’s life as well as mourning her death, and therefore the “prettier” royal presentation was more fitting.

[Andrew]

Were the purple idents and presentation really appropriate on the day of the death though, when the nation was in shock and mourning? You could argue that later the mood was as much celebrating the Queen’s life as well as mourning her death, and therefore the “prettier” royal presentation was more fitting.

I was going to say something similar. The first day or so was definitely where only black or grey pres would have been seen as appropriate

[i.h]

They'd obviously been pushed to the Sky boxes (Q and HD+) presumably via the Anytime feature) at some point, though Sky had publicly scrapped Anytime in favour of on-demand/catch-up about a decade or so ago but since those boxes upgrade via satellite there's clearly still a download route available.

But yes, they weren't a "oh heavens the DoE's dead, let's slap something together" job.  And I don't think they're part of the box software either - the hard drives in Sky boxes hold far more than stuff you've recorded yourself.

I wonder if it is was intended for an unconventional use of Sky's AdSmart, where the box replaces generic ads as broadcast with ones that may be more relevant to you, just with idents replacing idents.

Maybe there's a "hidden" flag that someone forgot to set...

[Transmission]

I know that for some time it's been the case that the obit presentation has been purple and gold for the Queen and blue and gold for all the other royals, what we saw a few weeks ago was a tweak to what existed pre-rebrand.

Those idents were on Sky boxes because of iPlayer playing out a BBC channel ident before a programme, I think? Which don't think happens any more (certainly not on other platforms).

[Dougal]

Just a minor thing, but these photos from BBC NI's pres suites show that there is a breakdown slide in the style of the special idents

twitter.com 

What's interesting about this image is the name given to the ident. If you zoom into the computer screen on the left you'll see that the ident is referred to as "Purple Lion Event Ident". Operation Lion is the overarching codename used for any death involving a member of the Royal Family (London Bridge is component of Operation Lion, just as Overstudy, Unicorn, etc. are components of London Bridge).

It shows a level of coordination between Government, the Royal Household and the BBC on these matters - presumably just to simplify things.

[Frances]

Just a minor thing, but these photos from BBC NI's pres suites show that there is a breakdown slide in the style of the special idents

twitter.com 

What's interesting about this image is the name given to the ident. If you zoom into the computer screen on the left you'll see that the ident is referred to as "Purple Lion Event Ident". Operation Lion is the overarching codename used for any death involving a member of the Royal Family (London Bridge is component of Operation Lion, just as Overstudy, Unicorn, etc. are components of London Bridge).

It shows a level of coordination between Government, the Royal Household and the BBC on these matters  - presumably just to simplify things.

Also curious about that list… Why did they split the coverage into two parts?

[Si-Co]

I’m also curious as to what SWCF North and SWCF South - and some of the other abbreviations - mean (on the monitors)?

[Transmission]

Also curious about that list… Why did they split the coverage into two parts?

For iPlayer purposes, particularly long broadcasts have had to be split up into shorter chunks and some EPGs also don't like longer durations, which is why for example on election nights a second "programme" usually starts around 2am. So even when it's the same production coming from the same source, playout have had to take into a second part with a new ID to trigger EPGs.

But I believe in this case the production was also split between the Westminster side in the morning and Windsor in the afternoon, so there was also a more practical reason to have two parts. All seamless on air, of course.

I’m also curious as to what SWCF North and SWCF South - and some of the other abbreviations - mean (on the monitors)?

Not sure about SW but I presume CF is clean feed and North and South are the two network playouts.