The
BBC (British Broadcasting Company, as it was known at the time) started
the world’s first regular high definition – ‘high’ in this case being
relative to what was technologically possible at the time – public
television service at 3 p.m. on 2 November 1936, transmitting 405-line
black-and-white pictures from Alexandra Palace (London) to an audience
of less than 400 sets. The transmitter range was only 30 miles, and
programming was very minimal to begin with – an hour in the afternoon
and an hour in the evening, and nothing on Sundays until February 1938 –
due to a lack of budget and studio facilities (only one studio
available until 1938 when the second studio housing the Baird camera was
recommissioned) and also due to early concerns about eye strain, though
staring for long periods at a small flickering screen must have been
difficult.
Lord
Selsdon’s Committee, set up by the Postmaster General in 1935 had
advised that the BBC should hold a public trial of the two systems
proposed – Baird’s 240-line mechanical scanning system and Marconi-EMI’s
405-line electronic scanning system, so both systems were used on
alternate weeks with each system’s equipment housed in separate 40 foot
long studios. The Marconi-EMI system was so obviously superior in all
respects that the Baird system was dropped by February 1937; Baird’s
camera was fixed and required the subject to be specially lit, compared
with Marconi-EMI’s cameras which could even be used outside with an
extension lead. Baird had tried to overcome camera restrictions using an
“intermediate film system” where celluloid film was rapidly processed
and fed into an optical scanner, but it became fairly obvious that this
cumbersome and expensive technique was merely a stop-gap compared to the
Marconi-EMI system’s future potential.
Before
World War 2 television was slow to catch on, largely due to the limited
range of the transmissions, lack of programmes, and the cost of the
receivers (£60 upwards) meant that typically only wealthy people could
afford them, so programming was aimed generally at this audience;
especially as the BBC itself was controlled by people from these
affluent social groups.
Television
was still very much in its infancy when the service restarted in 1946.
One set per street was common, and families often visited friends or
relatives who had a set in order to watch events such as the Coronation
in 1953. Also only two studios were available until 1949 when the BBC
opened eight new West London studios (one ex-variety theatre and the
rest were converted film studios).
After
World War 2 a comprehensive transmitter building programme ensured more
people outside heavy populated areas such as London could watch
television, though it was slow to progress due to funding restrictions.
In 1949 television reached the Midlands, Manchester in 1951, Scotland in
1952, then Wales and the West Country. Lack of signal coverage didn’t
stop people living in ‘fringe’ areas putting up large aerials in an
attempt to receive some form of television picture even if the end
result was unwatchable from time to time due to nearby interference,
even though for the first few post-war years television was heavily
restricted to a small number of programmes each day, typically starting
with a demonstration film in the morning and concluding with a news
broadcast being relayed in sound only. Large gaps between programmes
were very common, with interlude films or tuning signal captions being
displayed between programmes.
On
December 2 1953, the BBC introduced a new symbol for use as visual
identification (or an ident) for its Television Service, which quickly
gained the nickname of “bat’s wings” due to its shape, and was the
world’s first animated television ident symbol. Two ‘eyes’ rotated in
the centre of a mechanical model whilst flashes of light shone on the
wings at quarter-turn intervals; this was constructed as a mechanical
model and the animation was filmed because the model was too fragile for
regular use. The concept was developed by talented designer Abram
Games, who was commissioned by the BBC on the strength of his emblem
design for the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Games
also designed this clock as well as static cards featuring a simplified
version of the same logo. Both the animated symbol and the clock
remained in use until the end of 1959, but static captions featuring the
symbol continued to be used until October 1960, whilst elements of the
symbol (such as miniature lightning flashes) continued to be used for
Schools programming until October 1961. During the mid-fifties,
television was becoming more ambitious in terms of quantity and breadth,
especially as post-war rationing was gradually coming to an end;
programmes during this era included Mainly For Women, quiz show What’s My Line?, comedy series Emney Enterprises, drama serial The Grove Family, children’s favourite The Flowerpot Men and the groundbreaking six-part science fiction drama Quatermass and the Pit.
Television
was starting to prove that the coverage of news and current events
could combine the immediacy of a radio news report with visuals which
were far more up-to-date than a cinema newsreel, even if news bulletins
in particular were somewhat restricted in terms of what was achievable
with the resources available to them. The use of still photographs to
illustrate news stories (as opposed to moving pictures) was extremely
commonplace, with regional news programmes in particular continuing with
the practice into the 1980s primarily due to a lack of resources.
The
early post-war BBC news bulletins were often almost identical in format
to the newsreels shown in cinemas, but competition from Independent
Television News from 1955 onwards caused the BBC to adopt a more
flexible presentation format for its bulletins. Shown here is Richard
Baker presenting the 6pm news bulletin.
Post-war
improvements in television technology meant that outside broadcasts of
events such as horse racing were not only technically feasible but a
wireless link meant that the action could be relayed back to the studios
in real time from a moving vehicle for a truly live broadcast with no
need to rush-process reels of film.
The
advent of video recording using magnetic tape in 1956 not only meant
that programmes could now be easily recorded and reused, but also
allowed for the recording of outdoor and indoor events for replaying at a
more convenient time. Shown here is one of the first videotape
recorders that was housed at the BBC’s Lime Grove studios; early
videotapes were unreliable so the recording had to be replayed by a
technician to check the quality of the recording before it was used for
broadcast. Due to the high price of both the recorder and the tapes, the
tapes were frequently wiped and reused after a programme had been shown
or after a later repeat showing, therefore many programmes were not
kept for posterity as a consequence unless they were judged to be of
particular importance.
Video
playback was particularly useful for the replay of sporting events such
as horse racing, though good quality and immediate slow motion action
replays had to wait for the invention of magnetic videodisc recording in
1968, and the replay time of these early disc recorders was limited to
less than 30 seconds. Pictured here is the presenter of Sportsview, Peter Dimmock.
Current
affairs is a very important part of the schedule, and uses the medium
of television to effectively cover the background to current news
stories with a greater depth than is generally possible with a
conventional news bulletin; here is Cliff Michelmore presenting an
episode of Tonight. Other similar programmes include Panorama, which was (and still is) the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme that usually tackles a single topical issue in depth.
Dixon of Dock Green,
with Jack Warner as PC Dixon was a long running police series that was
rather old-fashioned in its approach even when it was first shown, but
was popular nevertheless and lasted right up until 1976 when the
competition (such as Z Cars and Softly Softly Task Force) started to make it look way past its “sell-by date”.
The
increase in viewers combined with competition from ITV by 1955 lead to
new programme ideas being explored. From 1956 onwards, Barry Bucknell
(pictured here) presented do-it-yourself projects on television, firstly
as a contributor to About The Home which was then followed by his own series, entitled Barry Bucknell’s Do It Yourself.
Just like many contemporaneous studio-based productions, this was
broadcast live, resulting in the occasional (and inevitable) on-screen
mishap. He then went on to present the much more ambitious house
renovation programme Bucknell’s House in 1962,
featuring a house in Ealing bought for £2,250. This area of programming
was relatively neglected during the following decades until the advent
of Changing Rooms in 1994, though there was On the House shown in the mid 1980s.
Grandstand
was the name of the BBC’s long-running sports magazine programme that
was broadcast between 1958 and 2007, mainly on Saturday afternoons when
much of the sporting action took place. Peter Dimmock presented the
first three programmes but David Coleman then took over the role of
presenter who was followed by Frank Bough, Des Lynam, Steve Rider and a
slew of guest presenters during its final years up until Grandstand‘s
final broadcasts during the last weekend of January 2007. It was most
likely axed because the BBC now had fewer rights to broadcast sport than
it did in the past due to increased competition from other
broadcasters; notably pay-TV sport channels provided by broadcasters
like BSkyB and BT.
The
above images illustrate the style of programme promotion used circa
1960, with its contemporary style and bold graphics replacing the Abram
Games-designed “bat’s wings” symbol; elements of the new design had been
introduced during 1959 prior to its formal introduction in 1960. Note
the “BBC tv” italic letters appearing in separate square boxes similar
to the modern BBC logo style, and the clock kept the unusually long
second hand previously used for the “bat’s wing” clock. However this
presentation style didn’t last nearly as long as the Abram Games symbol,
with the introduction of the first of a succession of various globe
symbols used to identify BBC Television soon to follow together with
changes in style for the BBC corporate logo.
With
television now rapidly becoming the dominant broadcasting medium in the
UK, the BBC needed somewhere that was much bigger than Alexandra Palace
to accommodate its production requirements, therefore a new
headquarters known as BBC Television Centre was commissioned and built
on a suitable site in West London, with construction commencing in 1952
and Television Centre was ready for use by June 1960. From the air, the
Television Centre buildings appear to take on the shape of a question
mark, because that layout was thought to be best for the site in
general.
The
BBC naturally wanted to show off its new Television Centre building to
its viewers, so a special light entertainment programme was shown on 29
June 1960 in order to do just that, logically entitled First Night.
Not all of the BBC’s departments moved into the new building
straightaway, with (for example) the News division not moving into
Television Centre until 1969. The Open University was to make use of
otherwise-unused Alexandra Palace studio facilities from 1970 onwards.
The 1963 Eurovision Song Contest came from London
due to the United Kingdom winning the previous year’s contest, giving
the BBC an opportunity to show off its still relatively new Television
Centre headquarters to a much bigger Eurovision audience worldwide.
The
introduction of BBC2 in 1964, which enabled extra programmes which were
not necessarily of mass appeal to be shown, and eventually colour was
introduced to (what was now known as) BBC1 by the end of the decade.
Some very memorable and ground-breaking programmes were being produced
during this period which are still being shown around the world today,
such as Steptoe and Son, and the long-running Doctor Who series began. Other programmes shown during the late 1960s included the popular sitcom Beggar My Neighbour, soap The Newcomers and football club drama United.
The
weather forecast had progressed from the use of hand-drawn maps to the
use of magnetic symbols by the mid-1960s as shown here, and this style
of map continued to be used for several years after BBC1 had started
broadcasting in colour in 1969. Before the use of magnetic symbols,
everything had to be hand-drawn which was a time-consuming practice as
well as being rather inflexible; the whole map obviously had to be
redrawn if a correction was required.
Despite
BBC1 getting the go-ahead to start a colour service in 1969, the
regional centres were inevitably slower to upgrade all of their
equipment to provide a colour service due to cost reasons, and it was
several months before Television Centre was fully colour-equipped. The
news magazine programme Nationwide incorporating
reports and features from the various regions also started in this
particular year, and some of the regional contributions weren’t produced
in colour until the end of the 1970s. (Inside Out is perhaps the modern
spiritual successor to Nationwide even if The One Show has a similar mix of features and studio discussion pieces.)
1972
was the 50th anniversary of the BBC, though at that time less than 20%
of viewers had a colour television despite a colour service being
available on all three channels since 1969; the BBC’s summer Olympic
Games coverage did however help to boost colour television sales during
1972. Notable BBC1 programmes broadcast during the early 1970s included Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game (its initial title) which started in 1971, science fiction drama Moonbase 3, drama series Owen, M.D., plus the popular sitcoms Are You Being Served? and the very long-running Last Of The Summer Wine began in 1972.
By
the mid 1970s most families had at least one television set, and nearly
all of the populated regions of the British Isles could receive
television pictures in some form even if it was only a 405-line
monochrome signal. Sitcoms and studio-based light entertainment were of
extremely high quality during this period, with many classic programmes
produced including It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, The Good Life and The Liver Birds. The Two Ronnies, The Morecambe and Wise Show and The Mike Yarwood Show featured in what many people now consider to be the BBC’s greatest ever Christmas Day schedule in 1977.
First given a public demonstration in 1972, the BBC-developed CEEFAX
information service commenced public transmissions in September 1974
though it wasn’t until 1976 when suitable set-top boxes for the service
were available to buy in any quantity.
The Basil Brush Show
started life as a children’s programme in 1968, showing on Thursdays
just before the early evening news, but by the mid-1970s it had moved to
an early Saturday evening slot and was now a very popular mainstream
family entertainment show, featuring top singing stars like Cilla Black,
Demis Roussos and Petula Clark that often did a comedy duet with fox
puppet Basil as well as singing on their own. Basil is shown here with
Roy North, who became Basil’s human sidekick in 1976.
Angels
was a popular drama series set in a fictional (St. Angela’s) hospital,
and is just one example of the BBC’s prodigious drama output from the
1970s. Indeed Angels survived until the early 1980s and was the spiritual predecessor to Casualty (which started in 1986) and its later spin-off Holby City which are now shown on a regular basis. Other drama offerings from this period included historical drama I, Claudius, and science fiction series Blake’s 7 began in 1978.
Pictured
is what a typical BBC News bulletin looked like in 1978, with Angela
Rippon being the newsreader. There was still a predominance of
photographs used during this period as opposed to the video clips that
typify modern news bulletins, though national news bulletins were
steadily becoming more sophisticated in their visual presentation.
Here’s
an example of a BBC1 Saturday evening programme schedule as broadcast
on 14 April 1979. At this point virtually all new programmes were now
being produced in colour, though there were still a significant number
of people that didn’t have colour televisions; 1976 being the year when
colour TV licences outnumbered those issued for black and white. 1979
also saw the broadcast of what was the most ambitious natural history
series commissioned up to that point, namely Life on Earth, presented by David Attenborough.
Blankety Blank
was a popular BBC quiz show which was first presented by Terry Wogan
(famous for having his long stick microphone bent by Kenny Everett), but
was later presented by Les Dawson. Then the series was revived with
Lilly Savage at the helm, followed by ITV giving the idea a brief
revival itself but none of these revivals matched the popularity of the
original series.
1982
was the 60th anniversary of the BBC, and the “60 BBC Years” slogan was
also used at the bottom of the BBC1 globe ident for a while as part of
the celebrations. September that same year also saw the introduction of a
new light entertainment series: The Late, Late Breakfast Show,
which featured a selection of occasionally dangerous stunts performed
by members of the public in the “Give It A Whirl” slot that resulted in
several injuries and a death that caused the show to be cancelled in
1986. The Late-Late Breakfast Show was presented by Noel Edmonds who at that point was famous for presenting breakfast shows both on the radio and Swap Shop on BBC1, hence the tongue-in-cheek title.
1982
was also the year of the Falklands War, with the BBC naturally devoting
significant coverage to this particular news story allowing for the
limitations of war reporting. Also the raising of the wreck of the Mary
Rose was shown live on television in the same year.
The start of 1983 heralded the launch of breakfast television, with the BBC getting in first with their Breakfast Time
before the new TV-am ITV franchise started over on Channel 3. Frank
Bough and the team turned out to be just what the nation was waiting for
in terms of breakfast television in the morning, and the new TV-am got
off to a bad start to the day as a consequence.
By
January 1985 the old 405-line VHF network had completely closed down,
and a full daytime television schedule launched in 1986 that included Neighbours,
the Australian soap opera which is still being shown on Channel 5. By
1989 the BBC and other broadcasters also faced competition from the
newly-emerging satellite services (Sky and BSB, with Sky eventually
taking over BSB to form BSkyB). Pictured is an example of what a
Saturday evening’s viewing on BBC1 looked like on the 6th of June 1987.
This
graphic style used for BBC News has the nickname of “Star Wars” due to
the logo appearing to be constructed in space using a beam of light; it
certainly seemed to match the mood of the period in terms of its drama
and pomposity.
The
1980s was also the era of the video cassette recorder or ‘VCR’;
although such devices were available in the 1970s (and earlier) it was
this decade that saw them become widely available and (by 1987)
inexpensive thanks to the aggressive pricing of Far Eastern-produced
machines such as Amstrad. Teletext became commonplace on more expensive
sets and included on some of the cheaper ones too, and Nicam stereo
sound was introduced towards the end of the decade, initially from
certain transmitters only.
All
smoke and mirrors? The globe above was replaced with this smoky light
reflecting version in 1991, together with the return of the 1960s
typeface. The word ‘Stereo’ appeared in the top-left hand corner when a
programme with a stereo soundtrack followed – BBC1 was the last
established UK channel to formally introduce Nicam stereo, which it did
in September 1991, but not all major transmitters had been upgraded to
carry the digital signal from day one.
The
change from a globe to a balloon (albeit with a globe pattern) came at
the same time as the BBC changed its onscreen font to Gill Sans in
October 1997, which was part of Martin Lambie-Nairn’s corporate vision
for the BBC. The adoption of Gill Sans was something that was both
traditional and forward-thinking in terms of looking better when
displayed in the new widescreen format and when decompressed from a
digitally-compressed datastream compared with the old sloping rhombus
typeface that dates back to the 1960s. A variety of short video clips
are used featuring the BBC balloon in different locations around the
British Isles (above a castle, behind a suspension bridge, etc.),
meaning that the balloon usually had a different ‘view’ before each
programme as opposed to the essentially static backdrop that the globe
had.
Also
launched at the same time as the new corporate look for the BBC was
perhaps the most successful UK TV-based promotion of all time; it was
based around a simple concept, namely that the BBC offers a huge variety
of different types of music, catering for almost every taste on its
numerous radio and television services.
Set
to the soundtrack of Perfect Day, a song originally performed by Lou
Reed who also appears amongst the numerous celebrities who both take it
in turns to sing and appear on screen, with a slide projector showing
various images interspersed with the celebrities. Also note the thin
black bars appearing at the top and bottom of the pictures, indicating
that it was one of the first BBC productions to be produced in
widescreen format, though the widescreen format was only formally
introduced with the introduction of digital widescreen broadcasting the
following year.
This
version of Perfect Day was released as a charity record and sold more
than a million copies in the UK, reaching Number 1 in the singles chart
and most likely to have been a major factor in the popularity of this
particular promotion, though it has to be said that the promotion itself
was exquisitely produced and directed therefore is essentially a work
of art in its own right.
March
2002 saw a radical new look introduced for BBC One; the main channel
logo now appears in a box just like the BBC Two logo, but more
controversially the globe as a centrepiece has now been banished to the
history books, and instead various sequences using dance as a theme have
been introduced. The whole emphasis was to introduce a modern
multicultural ‘feel’ to the channel, but whether the identity of the
channel had been diluted as a result is open to debate, especially as
the channel’s presentation package only lasted four years before being
replaced by something else.
Several programming ideas were tried in 2004 with mixed results; Test your Pet,
presumably intended to be educational in relation to animal training
but ended up being closer in spirit to to the somewhat infamous but fun Pets Win Prizes. As well as testing pets, humans were equally tested in Come and Have a Go… If You Think You’re Smart Enough, consumer issues were aired in the short-lived Brassed Off Britain, detective drama Murphy’s Law received an airing but something rather more enduring also debuted soon afterwards – Strictly Come Dancing,
a dance competition show which rapidly became very popular and
continues to this day. And the following year saw the rejuvenation of an
old idea which also proved to be just as popular.
By
2005 Lorraine Heggessey had been replaced by Peter Fincham as
controller of BBC One, and the general consensus was that Heggessey had
left the channel in a relatively strong position in terms of its drama
output with a newly rejuvenated Doctor Who alongside other popular series like New Tricks,
proving that it is still possible to have a drama series that appeals
to the whole family, though the channel was criticised in the BBC Annual
Report for perhaps running too many repeats in peak time. Hustle and A Picture of Britain were other examples of popular programmes, plus The Kumars at No 42 being an example of a programme transferred from BBC Two to BBC One.
August 2006 saw the first four week trial run of The ONE Show,
but its debut had notable differences compared to what the series
became when it returned as an (almost) regular fixture of early weekday
evenings on BBC One starting from July 2007, notably a different
co-presenter alongside Adrian Chiles (Nadia Sawalha), plus a different
title sequence with different music as well as the studio being based in
Birmingham (the studio overlooked a canal).
During
the 2006 trial there was a more formal use of a map showing different
UK locations where each regional feature originated from. The ONE Show
was thought of by some people as being a spiritual successor to
Nationwide, but this was perhaps more the case for the trial run with
its map-based presentation as opposed to the revamped final version
which had essentially become just a succession of studio-linked
features.
The ONE Show‘s
trial run was judged to have been a success but several changes were
made including the moderately controversial step of moving the show’s
studio base to London as well as employing Christine Bleakley as a
co-presenter since Sawalha was no longer available, though both Chiles
and Bleakley were later lured by ITV in order to head up their new GMTV
replacement, Daybreak, but that didn’t work out as
expected therefore both are now employed on different projects within
ITV productions. (Chiles was and still is noted for his football
punditry.)
Also included immediately after The ONE Show during its 2006 trial was a short regional news opt-out billed as an “news update”; illustrated here is the BBC North West Tonight News Update, presented by Gordon Burns who has now retired and been replaced by Roger Johnson (ex-BBC South Today).
What
comes around…The dance and movement idents were inevitably replaced by
new idents in 2006, and Red Bee Media had been contracted to produce
their replacement. For inspiration they looked at some of the early
1950s BBC Television Service idents which inevitably used some form of
circle as part of a tuning signal for viewers to adjust their TV sets,
and everything from the Abram Games “bat’s wing” symbol to the later
globes also featured a circle as part of their design, so Red Bee
proposed that a new identity theme should be based around the concept of
circles. New idents were produced which featured real life circular
elements such as hippos, surfers, dancing children and the moon, plus
the channel logo was given a new and bolder treatment. A circle
signifies ‘togetherness’ in the eyes of the branding consultants, but
whether viewers actually made the connection remained to be seen.
The second series of the critically-acclaimed drama Life On Mars
(about a policeman who thinks that he’s living in 1973) was shown on
BBC One and repeated on BBC Four during February and March of 2007. Red
Bee Media was given the contract to produce promotional material for
this series, and the end result was an imaginative collection of various
items such as bus shelter posters and promotional clips which had been
given a retro 1970s-style treatment.
Plus each episode of Life On Mars
on BBC One began with a widescreen recreation of the style of globe
ident that was in use during this era, whilst viewers in Wales were
treated to a different, genuine mechanical globe complete with a
voiceover provided by a continuity announcer who had worked during the
early-’70s period. (Though BBC Wales didn’t actually use this type of
globe until 1974.)
Other BBC One programmes in 2007 included the rather ambitious series Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain
which attempted to cover a huge subject in five programmes broadcast
between 22 May and 19 June, and its critical success resulted in a
follow-up series entitled Andrew Marr’s The Making of Modern Britain.
2010
saw a General Election in which a coalition government was returned,
given no overall majority in the House of Commons. The BBC was on-hand
to provide its comprehensive results service as is normal for such
occasions, with its BBC News channel also providing rolling coverage
once the main programme had drawn to a close.
The
first major department to move from London’s Television Centre to
MediaCityUK in Salford Quays was children’s television, with the Blue Peter garden following Blue Peter to its new Salford home and is now a rooftop garden. This picture is taken from the very first Blue Peter
to be broadcast from Salford, with the two regular presenters arriving
via dramatic means – Helen Skelton by helicopter and Barney Harwood by
jet ski.
And finally…BBC North West Tonight was the last
department to move out of Broadcasting House in Oxford Street,
relocating to its new home in the BBC’s new MediaCityUK complex at
nearby Salford, and is now based alongside the BBC’s children’s TV and
sport departments (amongst others) that had already relocated there from
London. Manchester’s Broadcasting House was opened in July 1976 and had
formerly been the home for everything from Mark and Lard to Life On Mars over the years. Demolition of Broadcasting House commenced in August 2012 and had been completed by the end of March 2013.
2012
was certainly a busy year for the BBC in terms of large public events;
firstly there was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with its associated river
pageant and concert to cover as well as the London Olympic Games later
in the year. The BBC’s coverage of the pageant was, however, not one of
its finest moments due to several technical problems meaning that many
of the planned live links with boats taking part in the pageant had to
be cancelled, inevitably resulting in land-based presenters such as
Fearne Cotton being left with the task of filling in much more
frequently than originally intended.
Thankfully
the BBC’s coverage of the Diamond Jubilee concert went much more
smoothly, even if there were a few complaints about concert sound
quality from some viewers. Various big-name acts took to the stage,
including Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Robbie Williams, Tom Jones, Sir
Cliff Richard, Grace Jones doing a highly memorable routine with a hula
hoop to Slave to the Rhythm, and Madness performing on top of Buckingham
Palace whilst various images were being projected on the front of the
building. The end result was a concert which was watched by an average
of nearly 15 million viewers.
Once
in a lifetime…The London 2012 Olympic Games promised the biggest
sporting spectacle the UK had ever seen, therefore it was the BBC’s
obligation to provide the best and most comprehensive coverage possible
for its viewers. Indeed the BBC devoted a very significant chunk of its
resources to the Games as a consequence, which included an extra HD TV
channel for digital terrestrial (Freeview) viewers, 30 additional HD
channels for viewing via satellite, cable or online plus other radio and
online resources. It wasn’t surprising therefore that an elaborate
animated promotion was commissioned to promote the BBC’s wide-ranging
coverage of such a major event.
Shown
on BBC1, BBC One HD and also on the BBC HD channel in 3D, the London
2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony was watched by a peak of 27 million
viewers; that’s roughly half the population of the UK tuning in to watch
at least some of the ceremony’s live coverage. Danny Boyle was
responsible for producing and directing the ceremony’s elaborate
routines, set design and special effects that culminated in the lighting
of the Olympic cauldron by eight promising young athletes using the
Olympic torch that had previously been carried around the UK by various
selected individuals over the previous weeks.
Despite
recent distractions such as the aforementioned Olympics and Diamond
Jubilee as well as the upheaval of moving staff and equipment out of
Television Centre prior to its redevelopment, BBC One as a channel has
continued to be a strong performer in terms of popular entertainment,
factual programming, drama and comedy, with shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, Frozen Planet, Africa and Call the Midwife all attracting attention, with Miranda, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Outnumbered
being three of the most popular comedies produced by the BBC in recent
years. (Mrs Brown’s Boys is actually a co-production with Irish
broadcaster RTÉ, who gets to broadcast each episode before the BBC
does.)
Another
important event for the BBC happened on 21 December 2012, which was the
very last occasion when CBBC programmes were broadcast in a block on
BBC One. Showing selected children’s television programmes on BBC One in
the future isn’t out of the question, and there were plans to show
series such as Horrible Histories in a teatime slot where they can be
appreciated by a family audience as opposed to the (predominantly)
children (and their parents) audience of the CBBC and CBeebies channels.
Childrens’ television has perhaps been changed the most radically by
the digital TV revolution, namely that many parents quickly opted to
choose dedicated childrens’ TV channels for their children to watch when
given the choice to do so.
Where
next…2012 also saw the BBC on the receiving end of some bad publicity
in relation to the alleged antics of a now-deceased DJ and TV presenter
Jimmy Savile, with some people thinking that BBC management at the time
had some knowledge of Savile’s behind-the-scenes misbehaviour even
though it’s almost certain that management at the time knew relatively
little (if anything) as to what really happened, as well as most of his
lewd behaviour occurring outside of BBC premises. Anyway, this breaking
news story subsequently led to two misreporting mishaps primarily
involving the BBC’s Newsnight current affairs programme that were most
likely caused by major staff changes made in short succession leading to
mistakes being made, but these incidents did somewhat tarnish the BBC’s
reputation for scrupulously accurate current affairs reporting as a
consequence, hence something was clearly needed to act as a PR offensive
in order to repair the damage.
Visually
impressive in its design and scope, “Where Next?” sets out to remind
the BBC’s viewers of all the good things the BBC has done over the years
in terms of both programming and innovative firsts, starting with the
British Broadcasting Company’s first radio broadcasts followed by the
first TV broadcasts, the first live outside broadcast, the 1952
Coronation coverage, satellite broadcasting, the start of colour
broadcasting on BBC2, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, CEEFAX, computer literacy with the BBC Micro, Newsround, Live Aid, Morph, Walking With Dinosaurs, The Office, Planet Earth on the iPlayer, Doctor Who
and the online video streams for the 2012 Olympic Games, seamlessly
linking one clip to another using all manner of visual trickery, and
ending in a succession of BBC logos shown below an enduring symbol of
BBC television, namely a globe.
Moving
out…As the BBC Television Centre site was now going to be substantially
redeveloped to include apartments and office space amongst other uses
including new television studios, the final BBC One news broadcast from
the ‘old’ Television Centre took place on 18 March 2013, followed by
programmes shown on 22 March comprising of a concert featuring the group
Madness followed by a farewell programme: Goodbye Television Centre, both broadcast on BBC Four. Originally tried as a one-off Christmas special in 2015, 2016 saw the introduction of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show
as a series with celebrity guests and features based around members of
the public which recall earlier entertainment formats such as Noel’s House Party and The Late Late Breakfast Show.
BBC
One’s on-screen identity based around circles had served the channel
well for ten years but by the start of 2017 it was inevitably considered
to be time for a new look for the channel. A new identity package was
introduced that was built around the concept of ‘oneness’, namely the
shared experiences of groups of people such as roller skaters
(pictured), an exercise class, wheelchair athletes, tandem cyclists,
night kayakers, etc., and inevitably this invited some comparisons with
the dance-and-movement idents used from 2002-2006 except this time there
was no dancing and no accompanying music.
2017
also saw the delayed completion of Television Centre refurbishment
under new owners, with BBC Studioworks (a separate private company) now
in charge of Television Centre’s three studios and post-production
facilities which officially re-opened on 1 September 2017, with
programmes such as the new music show Sounds Like Friday Night already making use of them.
Christmas
2017 saw the introduction of a new festive package of idents and
on-screen graphics, and it soon became clear that there was a new star
of the show (so to speak). A promotional animation featuring a girl and
her father where the girl suffers stage fright at a school concert
proved to be popular with many viewers, and also formed the basis for
short ‘stings’ and idents shown during the Christmas period such as this
pictured ident where father and daughter are trying to fix Christmas
lights.
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