BBC News: April 2022 onwards

[PD]

New blocks and a remixed theme tune for Reporting Scotland

[Brekkie]

Wales Today still not updated the titles. And as awful as the new boxed logo may look they are reminding us the old one didn't look great either.

[DTV]

I feel like Project Chameleon will be used as a case study for marketing and graphic design students in the future for how not to manage a rebranding project.

They'll have to reach the end of the rollout first.

I will not be surprised if Chameleon ends up like the cream and red News rollout, with it not even fully adopted before some have moved away from it - the BBC's politics programmes adopted the cream and red look two weeks after BBC LDN was launched!

[scottishtv]

New blocks and a remixed theme tune for Reporting Scotland

Yeah... although the updated theme tune is really one extra *boop* and one extra *bip*

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/scottishtv/...titles.mp4

...and the title slide:

[Lyric W.]

New blocks and a remixed theme tune for Reporting Scotland

Yeah... although the updated theme tune is really one extra *boop* and one extra *bip*

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/scottishtv/...titles.mp4

Funny thing is, it's not actually updated - that's a previous version of the theme they're using.

(a premix, if you will - which was also used for an election title sequence at some point)

[HTV Best]

Points West have even remembered to update the screens in their fake backgrounds to the refreshed title card. This feels like to much consistency for the BBC. Although the "points West" stacked 3 times on the right hand screen has disappeared.

[kevin86]

I’m not sure what the frustration is with so many members on this forum. The BBC is currently in the midst of a huge budget crunch so changes were always going to be modest. Rebranding an organisation like the BBC was also going to be long, slow and like turning a cargo ship around 180 degrees.

Be patient.

[Rick]

BBC Newsline using the same titles but with the old BBC blocks replaced (not properly) with the new ones. The box around the new graphic they slapped over the old footage can still be seen. They have also seemingly replaced their sting music with the music used at the end of the programme. The DOG has also been updated with the new blocks for the 6:30pm programme but it wasn't at lunchtime. Why do they even need a DOG anyway, they really should drop it. It even gets in the way of the weather graphics (which they still haven't updated fully to Reith either).

[Brekkie]

I’m not sure what the frustration is with so many members on this forum. The BBC is currently in the midst of a huge budget crunch so changes were always going to be modest. Rebranding an organisation like the BBC was also going to be long, slow and like turning a cargo ship around 180 degrees.

Be patient.

Excuses excuses.  That really doesn't wash.   This is a cheap fix which didn't need an extra six months to do and is actually an example of poor planning and wasting resources rather than saving money.    The BBC are churning out graphics for their news programming on a daily basis, they've delivered at least two new title sequences for programming (The Catch Up and The Context) since the BBC-wide rebrand in October and had sample graphics ready to go nearly a year ago in a survey ahead of the new look, which itself was pretty much a year in the making.

It isn't money holding back BBC branding at the moment - it seems to be a distinct lack of vision and care about the BBC brand as a whole.   Had todays changes been rolled out last October ahead of a full rebrand to come with the new studio next month we'd all understand, but that isn't the case.   We now have indications there won't be new titles for the best part of a year, despite the icon concept being a design which actually lends itself to simplicity - all it needs is the blocks moving around to a few beeps and a little bit of creativity and they've something quite effective which would work in the short term at least, if not the long term.

[DTV]

I’m not sure what the frustration is with so many members on this forum. The BBC is currently in the midst of a huge budget crunch so changes were always going to be modest. Rebranding an organisation like the BBC was also going to be long, slow and like turning a cargo ship around 180 degrees.

Be patient.

This only really works as an excuse if the BBC hadn't previously executed a far more total rebrand overnight before, which it of course did very successfully. And while the BBC might be a different beast today than in 1997, back then certain elements had to be physically mailed out to regional production centres - a click of the fingers rebrand is far easier today.

As Brekkie says, the entire rebrand has clearly been poorly planned out. They clearly jumped the gun on launching it back in October, with many elements simply not ready. While the BBC may have limited resources, those that they do have are not best used unnecessarily changing dozens of graphics templates and rerendering title sequences for what is a temporary measure because this hasn't been properly planned out. The studio changes are possibly the most emblematic of how poorly planned this has all been - a few weeks before Chameleon was launched Studio B was 'definitely' mothballed for the forseeable future.

It's becoming clear that Lambie-Nairn was not just successful because of his creative genius, but also the fact that he was seemingly one of the few who knew how to manage a project of this scale. This whole rebrand has just been amateur hour from start to finish (if they actually achieve that before we all die).

[James]

I’m not sure what the frustration is with so many members on this forum. The BBC is currently in the midst of a huge budget crunch so changes were always going to be modest. Rebranding an organisation like the BBC was also going to be long, slow and like turning a cargo ship around 180 degrees.

Be patient.

Why bother rebranding at all then, if budgets are so tight. The Gill Sans logo was costing them nothing to use. 

I think that six months is more than enough time for the core services to all switch over to the new logo, that nobody forced them to introduce. 

It's almost like certain production teams don't even know the logo has changed. Live/new programming should be fairly straightforward to switch over to a new logo over a six month period. But nope. The likes of BBC Weather and Politics Live continue to go out with the old logo. 

Nobody is saying that the last sighting of the Gill Sans logo should've been at 11:59 on the day before the October launch day last year, but we just expected more services and programming to have switched over, half a year later.

[GaryMcEwan]

New blocks and a remixed theme tune for Reporting Scotland

Yeah... although the updated theme tune is really one extra *boop* and one extra *bip*

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/scottishtv/...titles.mp4

...and the title slide:

Is this not the ‘original’ Election Reporting Scotland music that was used during the 2019 election?  Definitely sounds like it…

[Lyric W.]

New blocks and a remixed theme tune for Reporting Scotland

Yeah... although the updated theme tune is really one extra *boop* and one extra *bip*

https://up.metropol247.co.uk/scottishtv/...titles.mp4

Funny thing is, it's not actually updated - that's a previous version of the theme they're using.

(a premix, if you will - which was also used for an election title sequence at some point)

Bump.

[Moz]

Seeing the new blocks on a big screen rather than on iPlayer on my phone during the day - and it does look much better, particularly in the DOG, and even more particularly when it’s in breaking news mode maybe because then it has space to the left…

[Lyric W.]

Am I seeing things, or does the entirety of the BBC News display look somewhat rounded?

It's not as sharp or "HD" as I think it should be