Is programme slide and voiceover making a comeback?

The days of an announcer promoting a programme over a static slide are long gone. Or, are they?

It might not be a static slide, but this promotion for BBC One Northern Ireland’s local offering, The Hospital, is not too far detached from the format much favoured by British TV continuity departments until the late-1990s.

In these days of lengthy, slickly produced programme promotions that are played over and over again, for weeks on end, this simple format is quite refreshing. Short, no background noise, to the point. It might even be more effective than the more expensive, often lavish formats that have dominated channel junctions in recent decades.

And a not unpleasant side effect of the above local programme being scheduled at 9pm – BBC One’s latest big drama, The Capture, has been moved to a later slot (not the bit I’m happy about), resulting in the need for a revised version of the network trail – including updated network voiceover.

Normally, BBC NI would revoice the trail locally, using one of the announcers there. I have to say though – and no offence to the local voiceovers – but trails for network programmes should retain the original voiceover talent. Local voices for locally produced programmes – fine. But, if you’re going to spend money on a trail for a big network show, slapping a familiar local voiceover on it just doesn’t cut it.

UTV’s trails for networked shows have had the London-based voices for a while now. It works so much better and somehow carries more weight than the locally voiced format they used on UTV for years. It didn’t help that one local voice was used for all trails. Which, if nothing else, was rather boring and repetitive.

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