TV’s most boring ident? 

20 August 2011 tbs.pm/1278

Sat on my computer’s hard drive is several gigabytes worth of recordings of VHS tapes which I’ve been meaning to do something with for, well, err, years actually.

So recently I made a start and took the contents of one video and searched through it to see what there was. The contents were mostly Tyne Tees based and I’ve been busy uploading them and using them to replace some of the rather elderly RealMedia video files on Transdiffusion.

Amongst them was a copy of what I’ve always believed to be one of the most boring TV idents of the last 30 years. It’s the Tyne Tees ident from 1998 which replaced the much maligned Channel 3 North East logo.

It starts off in exactly the same way as the ITV ident in that the HTV logo sits there, but that’s about where the similarity ends because unlike the rather fancy ITV ident, absolutely nothing happens. The ident just sits there with some wavy blue lines near it until ten seconds in, the jingle meets its climax and… wait for it… the words “HTV Cymru Wales” scroll in from the left. It must have taken literally seconds to come up with the idea and makes Tyne Tees’s effort actually look interesting, and that says something.

Which makes me wonder… can there be any other idents between 1981 and right now that are so boring and dull? Any suggestions, pop them in the comment box below and maybe we can create some sort of “Tedious ident gallery”!

You Say

4 responses to this article

Arthur Murgatroyd 28 August 2011 at 7:36 pm

Surely the most boring on screen ident of all the ITV companies of all time must be that of Granada Television which replaced the “From the North” arrow following the 1968/69 franchise reorganisation and before the logo which was devised for the children’s TV show (because the real one was not a logo at all) was adopted.

It merely consisted of the word Granada between two horizontal bands.

Post 1981, the award for most boring ITV company on screen ident is a contest between Border TV and Granada TV.

As far as I am aware, Granada TV was the last ITV company to add a fanfare and animation to its on screen identification, unless Border TV was even later.

Chad H 7 September 2011 at 2:26 am

I have an Australian nomination.

Bit of background, in the eastern part of Australia prior to the 90’s, in rural areas you had one commercial TV station locally scheduled, , and one state station (the ABC) on a national schedule; in major areas (like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) you had 3 commercial stations, and the state national broadcaster (so the rural commecial stations usually picked the best programs from all 3). Then the government decided to win some rural votes by extending broacast license rules such that each license area could now broadcast into 2 neighbouring areas (and in return, their incumbents would get access to that region), with each of those 3 stations basically becoming a straight relay for the major cities 3 stations, this was called “Aggregation”.

In Central and South Eastern Australia, “Southern Cross” found itself allied with the 10 network.

Prior to Aggregation it was using this ident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9M4TTPwfkc

At the time of aggregation, Channel 10 was using the following Ident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOHSk7QBWI&feature=BFa&list=PL2F9E8A9F86FCCFE3&lf=results_main

But somehow Southern Cross (now “SCN” ended up with this boring effort:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bao38Fo1Rdg

Alan Keeling 20 September 2011 at 8:01 pm

I find todays TV idents even more boring, & you cannot get more boring than that.

Steven Oliver 6 January 2012 at 11:59 pm

Border’s ident as used from 1961 to the early seventies, and the colour “Border Television” static ident used from then until 1989, must surely have to be up there with the most boring logos. To be fair, at the time, the station had other things on its mind – namely the unions who managed to put Border off-air for several weeks in late-1978, for ten weeks in 1979, and for several weeks (again) in late-1982. It took a change of management after the 1982 strike to bring the unions to heel and prove that there was more to Border than Mr & Mrs.

Ironically the animated Border ident used between 1995 and 1999 was up there with the best, and put the likes of Carlton’s and Meridian’s efforts to shame.

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