Why are you into TV presentation?
#1

I'm curious to know what got us all interested in the rather niche subject of TV presentation? 

There's no one reason for me, but watching It'll Be Alright on the Night and various bloopers I remember made me interested in how TV was produced. I also vividly remember the launch of Channel 5 and the DOG which no other terrestrial channel had at the time, and the rather iconic 'colour bars' being somewhat striking at the time.

What was it that got you all interested in TV pres?
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#2

(24-01-2023, 11:29 PM)L1_ Wrote:  I'm curious to know what got us all interested in the rather niche subject of TV presentation? 

There's no one reason for me, but watching It'll Be Alright on the Night and various bloopers I remember made me interested in how TV was produced. I also vividly remember the launch of Channel 5 and the DOG which no other terrestrial channel had at the time, and the rather iconic 'colour bars' being somewhat striking at the time.

What was it that got you all interested in TV pres?

It started with a logo fascination when I was young, and from there festered love of artwork, visual design, and identity. Television presentation is one of those things that fascinate me to no end that I always held, and always will hold.

"Please stand by for further details, as we return you now to your regularly scheduled program. Hopefully."
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#3

I think there's an overlap of a few things for me. I was generally fascinated by logos and brands from a very young age, so I'm told. I'd always notice what make a car was, or what brand of food I saw in the cupboard, so I guess that would've included TV logos too. There's an added bonus of 90s pres being generally pleasing to the eyes and ears of a young child.

Then there was the fact that my nan had cable at the time, which I found utterly fascinating. We eventually got it ourselves around 1996/7 and just became engrossed in all the different TV channels on offer. There's a short bit of home movie footage from 1997 that catches me doodling a Sky Movies Gold logo on a magnetic drawing tablet.

The interest in wider presentation came from a cabinet full of VHS tapes we used to have, full of 80s and 90s home recordings that I generally enjoyed looking through to see how different everything was. The tapes were unceremoniously disposed of, and it's probably to blame for my habit of archiving stuff to this day.

As a final note, there was one day in the early 00s I decided to try and look for the old Sky tombstone logos on Google, having jolted my memory of them somehow. An image of them led me to the good old TV World website, where I soon learned I wasn't the only person who had an interest in this weird stuff.
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#4

My interest in presentation is mainly a technical one. I enjoy watching on-air presentation samples from the UK and elsewhere to get insight on branding trends and always marvel at networks and/or designers who adapt looks to cater to new channel branding etc. News presentation IMHO is the best example of how styles can vary between countries as each network has some form of heritage within their news brand which they must maintain while modernizing and adapting program looks to suit design trends, format shifts and above all the overall look and feel of the networks themselves.
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#5

I grew up with Local telly back in the 80's / 90's being boring in 1982, i grew up with Television South West and remember the strong 1985 idents even at school when we would watch an educational programme for some reason the TSW would shout out from the telly in the corner of the room and you would start to pay attention, then you had the in vision announcers telly you what was comming up, what was next, they felt like they were part of your evening, so when this started to be phased out and completey removed i missed it, i slowly got used to Westcountry and never really cared for it, only really missed that when it changed to Carlton then i got angry as what was local telly on channel 3 was now like BBC or Channel 4 which was boring
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#6

It was the BBC one balloon. My grandparents live in Scotland overlooking the iconic forth bridges. Whenever I saw it, it used to make them feel a bit closer as we lived in Norfolk and only saw them maybe once or twice a year. 

I had always been fascinated by the forth bridge and grandparents would always tell me about things happening connected to it. I can remember some day Nan was ok the phone and just said there had been a beautiful hot air balloon by the bridge and grandad had taken some photos  for me to see. 

I think of the day they launched my Nan rang up and said that’s the balloon we saw over the bridges. The excitement the first time I saw the ident on the telly for the first time I can’t put into words. 

Next Easter when we went up grandad showed us the photos. He told me he’d been in the front garden looked up toward the bridge and spotted a hot air balloon floating over it. He quickly ran in and took some photos as he couldn’t remember ever having seen one flying over the bridge. He then pointed out the helicopter saying he now realised that the helicopter was film. 

It was totally amazed by it. 

I think the the rebrand of the news I found fascinating. It was so different to anything else. 

On a side note, I used to be a primary school teacher and I did a media unit where we looked at the evolution of the media. We took the kids to broadcasting house on a trip. The other thing we did was create our own idents using the school logo. I showed them a range of BBC idents from over the years. They loved the 1997 BBC 2 set and most were based on that. They did their own version of paint, a cake one. Thwy were great.

Just a ident loving pres.fan from the East of England 
All spelling mistakes are my own #Dyslexic@Keyboard 
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#7

I was always fascinated by the technical side of television - it would be my go-to subject of choice for any school project/essay, however tenuous the link to the specified brief.

To a child in the late 70's the BBC mirror globe always seemed quite distinct and futuristic. I remember the feeling of anticipation trying to guess from the trails how the concept of the revolving mechanical symbol would be adapted for Christmas. I wasn't a fan of the COW years, which seemed quite boring and staid compared to the new Channel 4, but when the Lambie Nairn BBC '1' and '2' idents and presentations arrived in the early 90's it felt like a really exciting step-change.

Growing up in Somerset we could receive both HTV West and Westward, neither had particularly exciting idents but the contrast between the two seemed quite novel and interesting. As TJTSW mentions, when TSW came along with it's bold presentation and idents it seemed like a breath of fresh air. Similarly, going on holiday to different areas of the UK and seeing examples of their local presentation (both ITV and BBC) only served to pique my interest further.

As I have grown older, whilst not my main area of expertise, visual design and identity has always remained an important consideration and I have never lost my fascination with television...so here I am...
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#8

One day in the mid 00s, I'd typed CITV into either Google or Yahoo search and after going through numerous pages found TV Ark by chance. It was from there I got interested in seeing the old BBC and ITV region idents.

Before that, I do remember when I was a kid trying to memorise the different Carlton star idents.

Please excuse late replies. 
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#9

Speaking from an American perspective, I remember as a kid channel surfing through the 60 or so channels that a cable hooked straight into a TV could provide and always noticing whenever a channel changed its presentation or DOG. I'd be like "woah Nick has a new logo? cooooool" or "woah Biography Channel became Bio, that's epic". Never had a negative opinion about changes when I was that young. It turned into a fascination for me, making fake TV networks and branding and DOGs of my own on paper (and still now privately on applications, I'm weirdly too embarassed to share it even with my closest friends). Then I started finding places like Logopedia online and watching old American network presentation videos on YouTube.

Eventually, I think around 2017 or so, I started looking more into British TV presentation and lemme say that you all have it made with the continuity announcers and all. No networks have that here, unless you count TCM I guess. So I started looking into British TV presentation a lot more. First BBC, then C4, then ITV past and present. I go off and on, sometimes I'm really into this stuff, other times I could care less. It's usually around the time of major rebrands or upcoming rebrands, in US or UK, that I pick up interest again.

Maybe a bit of an off-topic tangent here, but I love how much of an issue obnoxious DOGs are in the UK. Stuff like how people successfully got BBC One and Two to stop it on digital, or how the BBC Four DOG when the network rebranded in 2021 and at first had a slightly less transparent DOG. In America. DOGs are almost always very visible and obnoxious, I wish any network here had miniscule DOGs set to 25% transparency (only Adult Swim really does that). I just like how different reactions are to presentation in the UK, and how networks actually seem to listen to the feedback here and there. In the US it's like "yeah we're split-screening the credits now. Speeding up the shows too. Getting rid of the bumpers. Deal with it."
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#10

For me it was the itv companies just the wonderful logos each region had that’s what fascinated me tbh, it was always a joy to watch the lesser known itv companies when their end board appeared on screen, Shame I didn’t gain the skills to take it up as a career because it would have been a job I would have enjoyed.
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