[simon_t123Member]

hmmm things are not sounding so good @ BBC Berkshire now a very short time ago they had the best use of Mcasso imaging that I’ve heard on any of the locals, but now it’s a patchwork quilt of a first generation news intro, not one of the stronger ones at that, some sung but not identified jingles at breakfast and a travel bed that doesn’t seem to be Mcasso at all & is not as good as what it replaced … yet with those changes they’ve kept the same promos & sequence for their top of hour, creative but cluttered … I hope this is a year where something new, different & consistent comes to the network, here in Essex we’ve now got newer Mcasso themes & id’s but last years news intro with a headlines intro that doesn’t match from a totally different theme, there’s some sloppy errors in voice over cut & pasting & some poor digital fading on items of imaging where the audio fades too bluntly & abruptly … it sounds like a half done job !

[UKJinglesMember]

You are absolutely right Simon…..Berkshire has become a bit of a mish-mash…
But it’s good to hear a few proper Jingles on certain shows including Howard Hughes JAM Cut when he sit’s in for various presenters!

[Vinnah]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased that BBC Berkshire are doing something different, maybe this is the start of moving away from the generic branding. However I think they should either stick with Mcasso or move away completely, not have this half and half thing they seem to have going at the moment.

Maybe they’re just testing the water before moving forward with a complete custom jingle package.

[star tetley]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased that BBC Berkshire are doing something different, maybe this is the start of moving away from the generic branding. However I think they should either stick with Mcasso or move away completely, not have this half and half thing they seem to have going at the moment.

Maybe they’re just testing the water before moving forward with a complete custom jingle package.

The next BBC package is to be generic.

[simon_t123Member]

“The next BBC package is to be generic.”

… Bummer !!!

[simon_t123Member]

What would work is a generic package with a choice of logo or sung pay-off’s … but that’s just the jinglemad’er in me if it’s another generic instrumental job then I’m not totally sure how anyone can improve on Mcasso’s work ? They have grown on me over the years, they do work … not so much the weaker beds mind ! I was listening to some of the Steve England / S2Blue packages of recent years for the locals, Suffolk, Cornwall, Essex, Cumbria etc … I think maybe S2Blue as a producer could make some credible material, their use of real ‘horns’ and ‘strings’ made those packages sound pretty good …

What seemed to happen after the ‘twinkly’ standardised logo’s came to air around the year 2000 was that the locals then seemed to go off in their own directions again ! Great jingles from Bespoke Music, S2Blue, the company who’s name escapes for Radio’s Bristol, Lincolnshire, Sussex & Surrey and even TM Studios for Radio Shropshire … That the mid-naughties was a time of independence for the network & I kind of hoped things would go that way again, when & if the purse strings were loosened But if it’s down to money then surely image is EVERYTHING ? especially with the most recent set of rather poor ratings

This topic will stay one that I’m most interested in that’s for sure !

[IanF]

“The next BBC package is to be generic.”

Can’t wait…..NOT!!

[AndyWMember]

Your main problem there is the Mark Forrest show. They have to play generics for that to work. Those splits work differently to how most stations do it in so much as Mark plays the music bed and then dry liners are remotely fired at the stations themselves. If a split mis fires which occasionally it will do then the listeners just hear the music bed fired by Mark in Leeds rather than silence. Then there’s that infamous four minute news bed that occasionally appears when a regional news reader forgets to put themselves on air. it’s all designed so that ‘something’ goes out during that networked show.

[mbMember]

flippant i know but silence is preferable to the Mark Forrest show – It drags down bbc local radio and is saps the will to live. I have heard countless four minutes news beds whilst traveling in the evenings.

[simon_t123Member]

The networked show tried to be clever & over-engineered things ! There are a lot of issues here in Essex with levels of VO to track which would be the fault of the presenter in Leeds, sometimes you only get a dry VO, if someone is covering for Mark you might even get nothing … If LR started to find it’s own imaging way again then the evening show & the news within could just use a bespoke package for use within that show plus simplified use of splits, the ones where a dry VO plays over music mostly works well but trying to trigger off a VO to the network over a short ID is sometimes hit & miss, so give generic ID’s as imaging but drop in dry’s to localise over the songs as they do now … none of the above waffle however will see sung ID’s back anytime soon I fear

[tom_h]

BBC WM have gone back to their first mcasso package. New voiceovers too, Allison Hammond sticking with the local theme.

[jamaicarussa]

I prefer the package they had until March 2015. Pete Morgan at Breakfast Jingle and Caroline Martin had good jingles.

[tom_h]

Radio Shropshire’s 30th birthday today. The breakfast show was playing some of the old jingles, I imagine some of the other shows were doing so as well.

[simon_t123Member]

Any changes / news amongst the locals … anyone ???

[star tetley]

Not a lot happening recently. I’m surprised Nottingham are still using the travel jingle that sounds like scraping nails on a blackboard – I believe quite a few listeners complained about it.

[RW]

Any changes / news amongst the locals … anyone ???

Nothing major, but BBC Sussex and BBC Surrey changed their travel jingle again a couple of weeks ago, to something much better than the feeble-sounding one introduced a year ago.

Also they’ve redone the news and weather jingles, probably because last year’s ‘refresh’ was inadvertantly done in mono and sounded dreadful. Unfortunately all their other jingles that have voiceovers are still going out in mono.

[GrahamCollins]

Schoolboy errors – feeble sums this up quite well !

[simon_t123Member]

Ewwww mono !!! could that be because they split L & R via playout for Sussex & Surrey ? I did some time as Swansea Sound & in the days of carts the L & R channels of one Sonifex player were routed off for FM / AM split jingles … I very much doubt you’d need to do that these days mind, but that kind of thing wouldn’t surprise me, depends if they’re still on the antique that’s Radioman & how that plays out splits …

I was thinking that nothing much had changed with the locals, Berkshire was using things other than Mcasso a short while ago, I wondered if that of been a cue for some of the locals going their own way to a degree … There was meant to be a pitch out for new imaging from any provider in April of 2014 I believe, nothing seems to have come from that nor have many of the locals aired anything new in that time !

Here in Essex we still have a headlines intro that came in from a 2015 refresh that uses a different theme to the main news theme, all sound a bit of a mish mash, the outgoing editor axed the travel bed after one listener to a call the boss hotseat phone in claimed he couldn’t hear the travel for the music behind it !!! We did get a much better & more uptempo guitar fest of an hour opener / bed this year & a general refresh but there’s nothing much that inspires here in Essex … they use their local dish out of Mcasso for all their regional programming on Sunday which does include the travel bed (the best one IMHO disco sounding) that was axed from weekday shows … Essex also has a new managing editor so possibly she will make her mark on station sound before too long …

[RW]

Ewwww mono !!! could that be because they split L & R via playout for Sussex & Surrey ?

I don’t think so, I think they were just made like that in error; the new travel, weather and news they’ve just introduced are back to stereo, thank goodness.

Although they didn’t manage to get the news jingle right when it reverted to stereo – they used a version with the 6 note logo instead of the 5 note version. Luckily this time it was corrected within a few days.

[simon_t123Member]

haha what fun although I’d of hoped to find something new out there ! I don’t think Mcasso have produced any new material for a while & the theme for the Mark Forrest show really should have been updated by now as it’s a ‘flagship’ ‘Englandwide’ production ! last thing they want is for that to sound stale surely ?

[star tetley]

A new schedule in Essex from Monday. Another Mcasso refresh?

[simon_t123Member]

I would hope so … They had a new managing editor in this year also, the schedule is being totally turned on it’s head … Essex & Lincs were the first stations to take Mcasso I believe back in the day, and the pitch for new imaging we heard about here is long forgotten … maybe something totally new will air ! I doubt it … but … always hope

[mbMember]

The Mcasso commission was a set piece and executed some years ago now – They are just recycling material round the stations.

[RW]

BBC London 94.9 is changing its name back to BBC Radio London on its 45th anniversary next Tuesday, which inevitably raises the possibility of a new or refreshed jingle package. Judging by a trailer I heard earlier featuring Tony Blackburn, it sounds very much like they are going with something entirely new – the music accompanying it was an orchestral theme ending with a six note jingle – nothing like any of the current Mcasso stuff…

[star tetley]

May just be London allowed something different? Should have happened in the first place!

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