Branding the daytime schedule

The BBC’s new weekday daytime schedule arrived in October 1986. After years of programmes for schools and colleges, adult education, not to mention lots of test card and latterly Pages from Ceefax, the BBC finally committed to a regular programme schedule for daytime viewers, with a wider target audience.

Most of the changes were on BBC One. BBC Two’s weekday daytime hours were already mostly occupied by programmes for schools.

Presentation-wise, there was no special effort for the new daytime service. BBC One stuck with its globe ident and standard slides.

By the following year though, a new BBC Daytime logo was produced. It was used on slides and programme menus – though mainly on BBC One.

The Daytime on Two strand on BBC Two continued to use the channel’s standard presentation. Though programmes in the late-afternoon slot on BBC Two did make use of the special BBC Daytime presentation elements.

Note the lack of channel identification on the slide design.

The other notable difference between these slides and the standard BBC One/BBC Two slides was that the daytime versions were entirely electronically produced (Quantel). The standard channel slides remained in the familiar 35mm format for the time being.

And initially, a special promotion sting and endboard was used for trails for daytime shows:

The BBC Daytime branding on slides lasted for about a couple of years before quietly disappearing and being superseded by standard channel slides again, albeit these were now produced on Quantel Paintbox.

Acknowledgements