The art of presentation

Programmes may seem to be the single most important part of television or radio but the handling of everything else around them can be equally important to the success or otherwise of a station. And that doesn't just refer to advertising in a commercial environment. Careful packaging of the programmes and the feel of a station may well prove to be even more important in securing long-term viewers in an age where it is not unusual to find the same programmes on different outlets at different times of the same day.

Presentation consists of a number of elements which can be put together in many different ways, like children's building blocks. There is a fashion to believe, similarly to scheduling, that the ways of the past have little relevance to the future. Maybe that is right. On the other hand the idea that the concept of station branding is somehow new is definitely false. It certainly used to be done differently and at times with a lack of complete coherence which seems primitive nowadays to some but the station ambience created by the masters in the past could easily match the best of what is seen today.

The main aim of this site is educational, in the sense of bringing long-dead television stations back to life with the nostalgia this might trigger off, but equally to show how these stations created their on-screen presence with little more at their disposal than simple animation, stirring music, geometric or regional symbolism, and on-screen personalities.

The Independent Television companies were faced with the need to establish themselves against the BBC and each other, especially when they were on a frequency shared with a rival, albeit at a different time of the week. The complex web of networking at that time naturally gave rise to the need for a flexible approach to cope with difficulties and a somewhat less-hurried style that used today, where presentation is often foisted directly into the programmes or elements are required to compete with each other rather than work together.

The base elements that a presentation manager has to play with are pictures, words and music. These can be decomposed into smaller elements such as:

• Idents

• Clocks

• Musical Themes

• Live Hosts (on- or off-screen)

• Static Captions

• Programme menus

• Programme trailers

• Interstitials for advertising (`opticals')

A good presentation manager can blend these ingredients together well to provide an interesting well-balanced meal which flows effortlessly around the programmes and can cope well when things go wrong. A poor one will stick to a bland formula using the same elements in the same manner and order each time and not care if the automated system will leave the audience in the dark in case of breakdown.