BBC News Remixed And Re-branded
Branding is a still worshipped greatly by media, marketing and advertising people so it’s come as no great surprise that the BBC have re-branded their News 24 outlet as the BBC news channel with another subtle remix of David Lowe’s theme tune and new graphics to suit.
Lowe’s theme has been in place now since 1999 and doesn’t seem ready for retirement yet. it’s interesting to see the Beeb’s potted history of news themes as around the mid 80’s they started branding and re-branding like mad with frequent and no doubt expensive theme changes over quite a short period (I guess that’s the 80’s for you-forget the content and focus on the style).
Branding is often seen as a bit of a King’s new clothes area of marketing and many may balk at the large costs of employing branding ‘experts’ (in this case a reported £550,000) but the effectiveness of a change of image can only be assessed a little way down the time line.
If the rebranding had improved BBC News I’d be more understanding, but it’s much worse.
Are the viewing figures out yet? Wonder if it’s made any difference.
Hi Kirsty-latest figures from BARB not available.W/e 13/4 show BBC1 10pm news getting close to 6 million with ITV evening news getting 3.84 (News at 10 fails to register in their figures). I’m not a natural Beeb news watcher myself (the theme is the best things about it) though I expect the rebrand is more about propping up or repositioning News24 as was and integrate it more with BBC World.We’ll have to wait for more up to date figures especially for the digital news channel.
I still miss the BBC globe hotair balloons. Sure I read somewhere that apparently the globe wasn’t “International enough” when they rebranded a few years ago.
Hello Adam-I was never as happy with those BBC 1 logos as with the BBC2 branding and even Channel 4’s recent ‘assembly’ idents. I guess they can’t please everybody.