Broadcaster rebrands that took forever
#1

It's become a common topic of recent months how often the BBC have missed changing a logo as part of what has been quite a slow brand rollout. I suppose its understandable as our biggest broadcaster they are held to quite high standards, and maybe we have been spoiled by some very efficient rebrands elsewhere which have stuck in the mind. But it's certainly not always been that way, and I thought for a change of pace it might be interesting just to look at some of the other less-than-smooth branding switchovers from other broadcasters over the years, particularly bearing in mind some of those had so much less estate to actually change at the time.

To kick things off one of the ones that I always think of, being my region of the time, was Tyne Tees in the latter few years of the regional brands in the late 90s and early 2000s. Their surprisingly lovely rebrand of 2000 brought with it a whole new corporate logo for the station which was thoroughly applied to nearly everywhere. Only for the network idents in use for the majority of the day to continue with the old rushed-out-in-an-afternoon corporate logo from 2 years prior, even after they themselves were tweaked with the ITV1 update. I guess by that point it's probably fair to say there was no real incentive from the powers-that-be on really keeping things in the regions looking smart - but even after they went all out with the national branding in 2002, that old local corporate logo doggedly lived on through the teletext service in the North East, and teletext services were still being quite heavily used by audiences in the early 2000s. Unlike some regions this was never replaced until all the ancillary text services were closed down nationwide in late 2004, meaning it would have been 4 years and probably about 2 or 3 pres refreshes before they finally removed the last traces of that old logo from active broadcast.

[Image: tttv2000.jpg?width=400]
vs
[Image: itv1tttv2001.jpg?width=400]
And finally, that old corporate logo still clinging on as of July 26th 2004:-
[Image: tttv_july2004.jpg?width=400]


So any other examples of really slow branding crossovers that spring to mind over the years?

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#2

I remember when Watch rebranded to their third ident set that there was an awkward period where the bumpers were new and then they will used the old idents. It was a bit weird

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#3

The Central 'cake' logo first appeared on screen in 1985 but the blurry logo was still used on the production company pre-programme ident until they were abandoned in 1987/88.

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#4

Many may forget that Central's early presentation contained a very mixed bag of designs representing the logo.

Whilst the very first ident was a globe with a shadow, the production cap showed the shadow as coloured lights. On menus and trailers, the logo was represented by a white outline icon with 14 segments on the left. In print, those segments were shown as black and white or in colour.

Then later there was the diagonal striped logo that was predominant in the continuity booth and again on trailers.

It wasn't until quite late when the segmented logo as we remember it was the only one in use.

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#5

The underlined BBC logo first appeared in 1987, but didn't start regularly appearing on copyright straps until 1990 (though there's a handful of earlier examples, especially from Pebble Mill programmes), but the 1972 rounded logo still appeared on some programmes as late as 1993 (and I've seen it on publicity photos from even later).
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#6

(07-08-2022, 11:45 AM)James2001 Wrote:  The underlined BBC logo first appeared in 1987, but didn't start regularly appearing on copyright straps until 1990 (though there's a handful of earlier examples, especially from Pebble Mill programmes), but the 1972 rounded logo still appeared on some programmes as late as 1993 (and I've seen it on publicity photos from even later).

Actually and officially (according to most sources), the underlined BBC logo was launched in May 1988, and making the appearance on some programmes in the same year and news programmes in 1989.
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#7

It did appear on a supplement that came with the Christmas 1987 Radio Times, I think that was its first appearance.
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#8

(07-08-2022, 11:03 AM)Andrew Wood Wrote:  Many may forget that Central's early presentation contained a very mixed bag of designs representing the logo.

Whilst the very first ident was a globe with a shadow, the production cap showed the shadow as coloured lights. On menus and trailers, the logo was represented by a white outline icon with 14 segments on the left. In print, those segments were shown as black and white or in colour.

Then later there was the diagonal striped logo that was predominant in the continuity booth and again on trailers.

It wasn't until quite late when the segmented logo as we remember it was the only one in use.

I've forgot about that one, took ages for the branding to come into its own.   It felt like Central were testing the waters with each different segment before another piece was added.

Even when the cake did appear the old branding was still in use over period of a week or two.    Maybe that's where the BBC got their ideas from  Tongue
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#9

If LWT could go their own way, I don't see why Tyne Tees couldn't. At bare minimum, they should've updated the generic ident. Though if they didn't have the template, covering up the text with a white box with blue lettering might have been required.
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#10

(07-08-2022, 11:53 AM)Asxer544 Wrote:  
(07-08-2022, 11:45 AM)James2001 Wrote:  The underlined BBC logo first appeared in 1987, but didn't start regularly appearing on copyright straps until 1990 (though there's a handful of earlier examples, especially from Pebble Mill programmes), but the 1972 rounded logo still appeared on some programmes as late as 1993 (and I've seen it on publicity photos from even later).

Actually and officially (according to most sources), the underlined BBC logo was launched in May 1988, and making the appearance on some programmes in the same year and news programmes in 1989.

I think it's been stated on TV Forum or TV Live Forum that the date of May 1988 is sometimes given because that's when it appeared on an ITN bulletin.  Clearly, the BBC would not themselves decide to launch a logo on a news bulletin on a rival channel.  In fact before 1997, the BBC didn't really 'launch' logos as such, they just gradually crept into usage, which is why it's difficult to ascertain exactly when the late 80s logo came into being, and why the changeover took such a long time.

As mentioned, it appeared in a See for Yourself supplement with the Radio Times (to be precise, it was the 2-8 January 1988 edition which would have been on sale in the final week of 1987), which is currently the earliest evidence of its use I have so far come across.

The 2021 logo is gradually creeping into use as well, but nowadays as you see BBC logos a great deal on screen and online the slowness of its rollout is rather more obvious, as opposed to the late 80s when you didn't actually see the BBC logo that much on screen, apart from on copyright notices.
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