[VMPhil]

Renaming the channel from the very widely known UK Gold to the messy UKTV Gold and then the awful G.O.L.D. must go down as one of the biggest branding mistakes in UK television. At least it's back to just Gold now.

[Lynetwork]

Renaming the channel from the very widely known UK Gold to the messy UKTV Gold and then the awful G.O.L.D. must go down as one of the biggest branding mistakes in UK television. At least it's back to just Gold now.

G.O.L.D. seemed like a case of them wanting to "rename" the channel when it made no real sense to do so - "we're doing the rest of them, so we may as well do Gold". I liked the branding and the ident/bumper package but the whole backronym thing had no chance of really landing. It was just shoehorned marketing fluff and it's not surprising that they dropped it not too long after.

[JAS84]

That was just designed to let you know the channel's new remit, right? As it became a comedy channel, hence Go On, Laugh Daily.

[Humphrey Hacker]

Heard they're changing the name to OFAH...

[Kunst]

That was just designed to let you know the channel's new remit, right? As it became a comedy channel, hence Go On, Laugh Daily.

Yeah, but the current branding and name is much better at it.

G.O.L.D. was quite a bad idea

[London Lite]

Heard they're changing the name to OFAH...

I've never really accepted that lazy claim that's it's a non-stop OFAH channel. It does rely on it heavily at weekends, but weekdays are full of classic comedy.

This week's schedule includes Desmonds, 2pointforchildren, Dad's Army, Open all Hours, Porridge, Last of the Summer Wine, The Green Green Grass, The Vicar of Dibley, The Royle Family, Are You Being Served, Live from the Apollo, Bottom and Peep Show.

Compared to the cheap and nasty FTA channels on Freeview which seem to dig up bargain bin shows that people didn't like from the 80s, Gold continues to be a quality classic comedy channel.

[Former Member 406]

Heard they're changing the name to OFAH...

This is also my perception of Gold.

Admittedly, my exposure to the channel has always been minimal to say the least. But whenever I have happened to see it, it has seemingly almost always been showing endless blocks of OFAH (and my interest in OFAH is on a par with my interest in the ladies, duckie...).

This is quite a common phenomena in the digital muti-channel era, with various channels that seem to predominantly air endless blocks of the same one or two programmes ad nauseum (e.g. E4 = The Big Bang Theory, Challenge = The Chase & Pointless, etc).

[W. Knight]

Is it just me that felt the celebratory idents could've done more?

The longer ones has the usual Gold style of cutting random items together in a subtle theme, but the short ones just has the dog (which is a nice harkback, don't get me wrong) panting and a 30 balloon behind the ribbon.

The dog interacting with the symbol, like tugging it in, might have been nicer, and also akin to how it was brought in 30 years ago:
youtu.be 

[Humphrey Hacker]

Heard they're changing the name to OFAH...

I've never really accepted that lazy claim that's it's a non-stop OFAH channel.  It does rely on it heavily at weekends, but weekdays are full of classic comedy.

This week's schedule includes Desmonds, 2pointforchildren, Dad's Army, Open all Hours, Porridge, Last of the Summer Wine, The Green Green Grass, The Vicar of Dibley, The Royle Family, Are You Being Served, Live from the Apollo, Bottom and Peep Show.

Compared to the cheap and nasty FTA channels on Freeview which seem to dig up bargain bin shows that people didn't like from the 80s, Gold continues to be a quality classic comedy channel.

GOLD is one of the best channels on Television. My post was made in jest but sometimes it does seems like the weekend schedules are monopolised  by OFAH. No programme is universally popular and I daresay that many GOLD viewers simply don't like OFAH and may resent it being rammed down their throats of a weekend.

For the record I am a OFAH fan as well as a Summer Wine fan and I feel that Compo and Co do monopolise weekdays.

[Larry the Loafer]

The OFAH repeats are one thing. What I really don't approve of is the habit of repeating the same episode of a particular show mere hours later. I can't say for sure if they still do it, but very recently I was watching an episode of Keeping Up Appearances in the afternoon, only to notice the same episode scheduled for around 6pm.

As for the dreaded G.O.L.D. days, I think that was a symptom of the incredible success of Dave, and UKTV became overly keen to give the same treatment to the rest of the channels. I'd argue Gold, at least now, is probably the only successful post-Dave rebrand. W still doesn't seem to have a clue what it's doing, their Drama channel is no stranger to showing comedy, Alibi shows a lot of what Drama should be showing, and the absence of Eden HD on Sky makes me forget it even exists. Blighty, Good Food, Really and Home speak for themselves.

I'm conflicted as to whether having the UKTV prefix back is a good idea or not. Having the logo flash up every now and again feels undignified when none of their channels feel like they are related to each other. Then again, maybe it's just my nostalgia talking and missing hearing people refer to UK Gold.