What are the worst idents you've ever seen?

[DTV]

I'm going to be controversial here and say I actually kind of like the Circle re-edits.

I didn't think this was controversial. The re-edits work far better as idents than the originals which, regardless of their creative merits, were just too long. On some of the original cuts, it was 10-15 seconds before the resolution!

[Jamesypoo]

As I said in the TVF confessions thread, I quite liked the 2006 concept. Every ident was supposed to represent an emotion; love, joy, sadness, pride etc.

[LukeHarrison]

I find the ‘volcano’ forming at the start and the jerky resolve at the end, and almost everything in between, particularly upsetting.

https://youtu.be/iAJ7x-8UBcc

See now, this is one my favourite idents of all time, but to this day I've never actually been able to work out what's going on, or the thinking behind. It's like one of those AI generated images that at first looks like a room but gets more confusing the more you look at it.

[ethanh05]

As I said in the TVF confessions thread, I quite liked the 2006 concept. Every ident was supposed to represent an emotion; love, joy, sadness, pride etc.

I can tell you now only one of those emotions was in my mind when I first saw these.

[Pip]

I find the ‘volcano’ forming at the start and the jerky resolve at the end, and almost everything in between, particularly upsetting.

https://youtu.be/iAJ7x-8UBcc

See now, this is one my favourite idents of all time, but to this day I've never actually been able to work out what's going on, or the thinking behind. It's like one of those AI generated images that at first looks like a room but gets more confusing the more you look at it.

The thing is... here we are discussing it nearly four decades after it appeared, so you could definitely argue that it did its job... and it is fascinating to watch (in a "how the hell did this make it on air" way). As for what's going on; they would have started by designing the logo by asking the question "What represents quality television and the South West of England?" to which the reply "Three strapless bras and an Allen Key" came forth. Then they all went to the pub, got really drunk, went straight back to the office, made the ident and hey bingo "Welcome to TSW, stay tuned for the volcano forecast". The eighties were wild.

[Mateus Honrado]

Absolutely loathed MTV's rebrand to MTV One and the idents that came with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr9DU9L_5Ek&ab_

(I can see what they were trying to do with MTV One to highlight it as the flagship channel alongside the genre specific ones with 'MTV' being the overall brand for all of them, but... no.)

TMF used a variation of that before they rebranded as Viva.

[Rdd]

Virtually every UTV ident ever.

https://youtu.be/Y06TQBsNEH8

Not every UTV ident ever. Actually, the 1993 Year Zero relaunch was good for the time, and the scenery batch of 1996 idents not bad (the musicians batch, not so much).

But if you are looking for a seriously bad ident, in the 21st century, Big Blue is it. Originated in the ITV 2002 package but UTV made it their own for too long.

https://youtu.be/ZG2ZlDsBSN4

[channelbox]

I agree that the 1993 batch was quite good, as were the 1996 idents. Then again, UTV never really used idents all that much in primetime, as of course, the station preferred to use in-vision continuity in the evenings, with the likes of Julian Simmons & Gillian Porter.

[AllWillBeWell]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoWpErJVtGE

Don't have nightmares

[Pip]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoWpErJVtGE

Don't have nightmares

If the filmed inserts in 'Take Hart' had been directed by David Lynch, they would look like this.

[UploadTV]

For me it has to be BBC Three’s rebrand in 2016. We all know the logo went down like a led balloon, but even the idents were atrocious. Dare I say it, one of the worst of the 2010’s? I get they wouldn’t want nothing too major considering the move online would make them redundant but still, the designs were awful and don’t really make any sense. It wouldn’t be too wasteful to design something that ties in with the channel. Especially poor giving BBC Three’s strong and recognisable background with branding... the blobs, the little people or even the 2013 idents.
https://youtu.be/IxBOwE6kZ_A

[Mateus Honrado]

ITV1 rebrand in 2006. Good lordy how did these ever get signed off for the main channel.

https://youtu.be/ca4urM0eii0

https://youtu.be/DnnYf3Z9YK4


This one was the best of the bad bunch (I like the music on this)....Toast going up the stairs ident.

https://youtu.be/fD7qM3ii_ug

The ITV1 logo splitting open was such a terrible idea. And white text on a yellow background! What were they thinking!

I'm glad that those idents only lasted a few months.

[Vanilla Vip3r]

Absolutely loathed MTV's rebrand to MTV One and the idents that came with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr9DU9L_5Ek&ab_

(I can see what they were trying to do with MTV One to highlight it as the flagship channel alongside the genre specific ones with 'MTV' being the overall brand for all of them, but... no.)

Agreed. I also thoroughly disliked the MTV UK ident package prior to those. Unfortunately I couldn't find any clips of them online anywhere, but they involved the enormous white MTV D.O.G jumping down from the corner of the screen and scurrying around a backstage area. This was at a time when MTV had pretty much abandoned any music based programming in favour of wall-to-wall Pimp my ride, Jackass and The Osbournes.

On a somewhat related note, MTV Dance had that awful devil ident and D.O.G for a few years. Eventually replaced with the far superior Beats, Club and Chilled set.

[VMPhil]

I'm going to be controversial here and say I actually kind of like the Circle re-edits.

I didn't think this was controversial. The re-edits work far better as idents than the originals which, regardless of their creative merits, were just too long. On some of the original cuts, it was 10-15 seconds before the resolution!

Then they shouldn't have commissioned them to be that long! I mean, some of the edits have the logo forming up before the circle in the live action shot it's supposed to be overlaid on even appears, thereby ruining the entire concept. And don't get me started about the replacement soundtracks…

[Fanoftv]

As I said in the TVF confessions thread, I quite liked the 2006 concept. Every ident was supposed to represent an emotion; love, joy, sadness, pride etc.

Totally agree James, they had a clear emotion led concept with the spacing used to frame the emotion.
Taking it slightly off topic, when a rebrand is commissioned would they commission a Christmas ident/Ident set at the same time or are they created later?

As for worst idents, that’s a hard one as with rose tinted glasses I look back in admiration at those that I may not have liked at the time. I’d possibly say the launch set of the five rebrand, I felt at the time that they felt lacklustre compared the the multicoloured square logos that came before them, dropping the original logo and colour strip felt odd too at the time.

https://youtu.be/veC-g7tWK_U

Looking back some of them seem ok, but the lack of music in most is what makes them weak imo.
The look of them and the whole package, especially the graphic based menus is good and brings back memories, but the actual idents not so much. What I have enjoyed looking back over them is hearing voices from Channel 5/five, their continuity announcers were always warming, especially the ones from launch with that wonderful package.