ITV Region: ITV News London
BBC Region: BBC London News
What got everyone here in to presentation in the first place?
For me, I remember turning to BBC One on the morning of the balloon ident launch and being awestruck at how different it was to what had come before, but also how different it was to anything else I had seen at the time (no Sky, and living in Wales we only had 4 channels).
The real interest in it came for me when I went on a school exchange to Hamburg when I was 14 though. Sky News was the only English channel so that sparked an interest in journalism for me, but seeing the differences in the way television was presented in Germany vs the UK started that fascination in it for me.
Being drawn to them at a young age and drawing channels logos in my free time. I was always fascinated when going to other parts of the country and seeing a different ITV ident such as Border and Yorkshire in the 90s. I widened my interests in the mid 00s when going to France by watching how different the pres was there compared to Britain and also getting more into adverts as they felt more different to British ads. I got therefore interested in French and Spanish tv and later German tv after moving there in 2012
Yes, it was always ITV presentation back in the late 60's into the 70's & 80's. I think it properly started after the 68 franchise changes and then colour. Living at the time in the London region we had more variety with Rediffusion/ATV and Thames/LWT. The BBC was just boring at the time but I appreciate it for what it was more nowadays.
I think as a child I always noticed when branding/logos changed in shops. But relating it to TV when I visited my relatives up north (Granada), I was curious how ITV was different up north compared to Carlton/LWT region*.
* Even the Friday changeover was interesting to me
I think it finally clicked when I saw randomly saw LWT's final weekend montage, with Trish and Glen saying 'ITV1 will be coming atcha with a whole new look' and that's when I started to do a Google search into what had happened, and that's how I discovered TV Ark/TV Home/TV Whirl and the rest is history.
https://youtu.be/QE0Go3rD5cE?t=349
It's the technical side that interests me. An appreciation of the on-screen presentation is there as well, but more about the unusual/not often seen (for example, BBC2's Red Dwarf Night back in the day, with the Scutters replacing the 2s for the night).
My inner geek was ecstatic when BBC did the Facebook Live during the 6(?) and we got to see the presenters view, gallery etc.
ITV Region: ITV News Meridian
BBC Region: BBC South Today
As I posted over at TVF... my obsession began at a very early age. I remember seeing an old TV Times that had all the regional logos in, and I was instantly obsessed with seeing these graphics on-screen. The first ident I remember seeing was the Central production endcap. Simply beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOxu3ZRlBwc
Fast forward to 2001, and a 16 years old me I was delighted to discover there was a community of people who were interested in television presentation, as well as websites devoted to the subject, and I joined TV Forum 20 years ago this month.
After a string of doomed websites, I finally hit the jackpot with TV Live in 2007, and since then, I've been passionate about keeping old television presentation alive.
As a kid I always had a fascination with broadcasting and loved to see behind the scenes items that back then used to feature from time to time on different programmes. Some of these are now available to find on YouTube or other sites, but back then if you didn't see it in the programme - you missed it.
Growing up with Phillip Schofield in the broom cupboard I was fascinated in watching the screen to the side with what I now know to be the programme clocks for each item. Seeing the picture roll and then countdown to when the programme actually started was fascinating. And I much preferred it when things went wrong and you got to see things that normally you wouldn't.
Despite growing up in mid-Sussex, our television aerial was pointed towards London and so we received Thames and LWT. But my friend on the other side of the village got different telly - TVS. And so that also became an interest as to what was where in the country and how it worked. And so I learnt about what the IBA was and all the different television companies by reading books and writing off for various information leaflets.
Today it is much easier to view and find material from anywhere around the world, thanks to the wonders of the internet. Back when I was growing up the only way to see such things was to travel to the different areas where the channels were broadcasting to watch them.
The BBC '2's are what caught my attention, I used to draw them and make my own versions. I loved seeing new ones that I'd never noticed before, as I would have watched a lot more of BBC 2 back then than I do these days. The Channel 4 blocks also were a favourite of mine, especially FourScore. Even seeing trails on BBC 1 and BBC 2 that were seamless in their switching of whatever logo was in the corner so you could tell there was an attention to detail (or blind luck) that went into the presentation that was visually pleasing. Standards have slipped somewhat in the intervening years, but I'm ever hopeful they will return.
Growing up in the Central region, the cake had a big influence on my interest of TV Presentation from an early age too, although I remember being obsessed with the (1998, I think?) Sky Premier ident. It still gives me goosebumps to this day!
https://youtu.be/J1bs89c0zTA
I think my passion for TV channels started pretty young, when we had at home a FTA reciver and I loved going around and watching stuff on satellite, be on Hotbird or on Astra 1 (the one at 19.2° E) . I pretty much remember watching cartoons in German on KIKA and Super RTL when I was like 5 or 6.
The big epiphany over TV presentation came in October 2015. I was bored and looking around on Lyngsat, looking here and there the pay TV packages lists they have on the site. I was looking at some list for a Southeast Asian pay TV (might have been Astro?) and one thing catches my eye. AXN. The channel was starting its big 2015 rebrand, and so I messaged another friend of mine interested in TV presentation and I asked them why the AXN logo looked different from what I knew. We figured that something was happening. So I went to the channel website and boom! I get greeted from a brand new look for the channel. That rebrand also holds a big sentimental value for me, as it was the catalyst for a creative project of mine that I still keep going, even if I rebooted it so many times in those years, in which I take TV channels and I humanize them.
I guess that was also the start for my love and hate for Sony's TV channels, I don't know.
Way, way, WAY TOO MUCH time on the internet as a kid.
I think these were my first seen idents: https://vimeo.com/219997376
"HA HA HA! Cookies on dowels."
When I was young I had a long-running interest in television in general, and I was probably making my own brand designs in Microsoft Works (on Windows XP, we avoided the nascent Vista at the time) on the family computer around 2007 or 2008. I really started to dive in deep around 2011 or so when I started being on the internet more and diving not only into brand design but international television as well, scrounging around the internet for streams and Vimeo for brand packages and YouTube channels that post idents and things like that. It was around this time I started reading things like [url="https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/"]Brand New[/url] and started keeping up with TV presentation in earnest; the 2011 rebrands of [url="https://vimeo.com/28301322"]Sat.1 in Germany[/url] and [url="https://vimeo.com/16520209"]Telecine in Brazil[/url] still hold special places in my heart as two of the first rebrands I saw online. The rest is mostly history from there, including finding TV Forum around 2013 or so (and stalking it until its end), though I did eventually upgrade my designs to OpenOffice's presentation program and ultimately PowerPoint!
What got me into presentation?
Well, it might sound counterintuitive, but I always remember CBBC in the very early 90s looking, for want of a better word, 'scruffy'. I only really noticed it much later when the corporate rebrand came in and realising how beautiful things looked in a very ordered and structured way. That, in turn, kind of lead to a fascination around typography and the 'look' to lettering. The rest, as they say, led to A Levels, Uni, and then a career in it.
ITV Region: ITV News London
BBC Region: BBC London News
A couple of things really. One was going on holiday in Kent and seeing TVS idents for the first time, the other is similar to [mention]GraphicsMan[/mention] where I'd watch the Broom Cupboard which I didn't realise at the time was a continuity booth and wondering why they'd show a countdown on the monitor in the corner before playing Blue Peter or Newsround.
I also remember making a huge effort to get TVS/Meridian from Hannington or Anglia from Sudbury so I could see the presentation of the regional news bulletins from home in London.
It started when I was about 7, and became more and more interested in the presentation on the CBeebies, CBBC and CITV channels. Then it evolved when I found some old CITV clips on YouTube, from the Stephen/Danielle era, as I thought it was brilliant seeing how it used to be. Weird to think those clips were only about 11 years old then, but I watched them 12 years ago - over double the time has passed :o My presentation interest progressed into 'grown-up' telly from there. Watching my mum's old recorded tapes, with idents that had since been dropped, was part of it too.
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