[IainJohnstonMember]

This isn’t strictly a radio ID question, but its one for UK JMers around “the regions”…

BBC TV often has a new ident/instrumental pad for “special events”, e.g. the World Cup football from South Africa, the big Christmas package last year. And all based upon the “Circle” of the BBC logo.

Here in Bonnie Scotland at least, there’s absolutely no trace of a specific custom “Olympic Ident” for what has been billed by the BBC in London as “The Greatest Show On Earth” – just the bog standard old ones.

Yet the shape of the Olympic stadium in London, and all the superb “circular” TV imagery of last night’s Opening Ceremony seemed to be crying out for a “circle” BBC TV Olympic ID.

Are any of you in other parts of the UK seeing a “regional” or “network” Olympics Beeb Ident and associated audio pad?
(…this is OTHER than the Elbow “intro” titles on Olympic sport programmes per se).

Or maybe they ran out of money after paying WB a one-shot payment for the new Radio 2 jingle package?

[MarkSMember]

Haven’t seen any customised idents in London or the East of England. An Olympics version would have worked well with the current circle logo. Perhaps it’s to do with the licensing of the Olympic rings, etc…

[Barras]

maybe they ran out of money after paying WB a one-shot payment for the new Radio 2 jingle package?

Very cynical Iain ! – unfortunately, there could be a ring of truth to that statement…

To answer your question about the BBC logo, it hasn`t changed here in Geordie-Land (i.e. North-East England) the logos are exactly the same.

MarkS made an informed comment about the Olympic rings…licensing and copyright etc…however, I saw Boris in a recent TV news interview saying, he would personally oversee that no-one got fined for using the Olympic rings in advertising, I guess that includes the Beeb too…

[IainJohnstonMemberAuthor]

Thanks for the feedback Gents.

Considering that the Beeb have used the single “circle” logo in many forms for decades, it should be nothing whatsoever to do with the “five rings” rights – all they needed was an aerial view of the main stadium – which is circular…(and paid for by the British taxpayers not the IOC or “corporate sponsors”) and they’d no problem doing a custom “top-up” ident for the Football World Cup (and BBC Radio Cleveland’s TM mini-package a few years ago just for a single fitba’ match has been discussed on JM before).

Regardless of cynicism (plenty of that of many other Forums!), it just seems like a big “missed opportunity” for the BBC at a huge UK & world-class event not to deservably “fly its own flag” a bit on its own patch.

(…and YES, I know the actual Olympic TV programming isn’t being generated by the BBC per se but by the OBS which is a composite of the engineering, production and transmission facilities of a pool of international broadcasters working togerther to share the huge workload, with individual country broadcasters putting their own “wrapper” around the many core feeds – except of course for NBC in the USA who have received a huge slagging-off for their “own-brew” Opening Ceremony coverage which appears to have been based upon the principles of the BBC’s disastrous Jubilee Pageant broadcast).

[IainJohnstonMemberAuthor]

…and now back to our normal Radio ID programming… (‘cos my Post went in twice somehow!)

[AndyWMember]

The BBC has fallen foul of the IOC before where Olympics idents are concerned. It was a long time ago but in 1984 they were still using the mechanical world and everything was blue and yellow. When they showed the rings as yellow on a blue background as part of the BBC logo the IOC were less than impressed.

[IainJohnstonMemberAuthor]

Don’t laugh – but I’ve been in the same room as one of those “mechanical worlds” at a Beeb continuity suite some years ago – the “globe” was only a few inches in diameter, burling round in a 3-sided wooden box effort, was painted in simple black & white, with a small fixed B&W camera. The fancy colour paintbox software and a character-generator did all the rest! (Today of course “everythings digital”).

[Author]

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