A selection of recreations from authentic sources of Rediffusion London idents, clocks and other on-screen presentation elements, kindly provided by Dave Jeffery
The Flash animations require the Flash player. Click on each image to view the animation, which will appear in its own window.
Rediffusion in colour? No, it’s not a ‘what if?’. These idents really did exist, and were appended to colour productions made by Rediffusion London in 1966-8.
The above colour ident appeared, accompanied by the familiar “Widespread World” jingle, on “Hippodrome”. This series of circus and vaudeville acts was made both in the Big Top and at Wembley Studios and Television House, in colour, for screening on the CBS television network in the United States in 1966-67 and on ITV in Britain. It was the first time a British series had been sold to the States on colour tape. The first programme in the series went straight to the top of American coast-to-coast ratings.
A silent colour ident was used on “The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten”, a 12-part series filmed by Rediffusion London in 1967-68 and networked for them by Thames from Autumn 1968 to Spring 1969.
A variant of the colour ident, this time with a gold Adastral (above), also silent, was used for the Rediffusion production of John Le Carre’s “Dare I Weep, Dare I Mourn” which was shown in colour in the U.S.A. and ranked at No. 15 in the TAM Top Twenty ITV Programmes of 1966. The production starred James Mason, and the copyright line at the end read, “Rediffusion Television Films”.
Rediffusion Television and Talent Associates combined to produce major television dramas for screening in the UK and in the United States in colour. For example, Ingrid Bergman starred in “The Human Voice” which was directed by Ted Kotcheff and produced by David Susskind and Lars Schmidt. You can see stills from some of Rediffusion’s colour productions in the articles on Rediffusion’s Wembley Studios.
Other Flash files by Dave Jeffery can be found in 625: Andrew Wiseman’s Television Room
