BBC 2 Idents A New Channel is Born
The birth of BBC2 was preceded by a publicity campaign and trade test transmissions.
The mascot for the new channel was of "Hullabaloo and Custard", a large Kangaroo
and a little baby kangaroo, safely stored in the pouch. The idea was that the baby
kangaroo represented the new BBC2, launching from the older BBC Television Service. One of
the graphics used showed an open back truck with a television set, the kangaroo driving
with their head sticking out a hole in the roof. The caption was "Get Set for
BBC2". I hope to present some examples of the mascots at a later date. The graphics
were drawn by Desmond Marlwood.
The name Hullabaloo was chosen easily, there was going to be a lot of it in the months
preceding the launch. After much head scratching and many suggestions, the baby was called
Custard, as "everything goes with custard". There was much publicity material
issued with the kangaroos, and even some toys were made. If anyone still has one, they are
rare collectors items now.
| BBC2 Opening Night, April 21st 1964. The
studio is dim and has a candle in recognition that they started a day late due to a power
failure the night before. This studio was used for the start of programmes each night, an
in-vision announcer presenting "Line Up" at 7.20pm.
| The first programme was Play School at 11.00am earlier that
day. |
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| In addition to the above ident, there was a separate one for each day, featuring the
day of the week. It was similar to the static board right with the name of the day between
the horizontal lines. The intention was for BBC2 to have a different feel each day, each
evening programmes would have a common theme. This was the first UK television channel to
use what is now known as "stripped and stranded". |
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This is a static version of the animated ident shown above. It was shown by pointing a
camera at a large piece of card. |
| The very first mechanical BBC 2 clock from 1964. Note the Roman Numerals and the wonky
logo. |
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At some point in the early years, the clock changed to this grey-background version.
The logo had been straightened by then. |
| Also seen in the early years of BBC-2 was this large "2". It was rotated in
to view, usually with a different caption on the other side. Presumably it saved on vision
mixers. |
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| 1967. BBC2 becomes the first UK television channel to launch a regular colour service
on UHF. This was the first colour ident on BBC2, and in the UK for that matter. It
started off with an animated drawing of the "2" from top to bottom, with the
white "Colour" appearing when the "2" is complete. Then the 2 starts
rotating, revealing that it is a cube with the "2" in different colours on each
face, starting blue, red, green and finally white.
| See it animated in RealVideo (with
thanks to Sean Hughes) |
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The black and white style clock survived in to the colour era, as this example,
from around 1969, demonstrates. |
| Around 1969, the BBC2 logo received a new font caption and a horizontal line. The
centre dot also changed colour. This is a static version. |
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A little later, a blue background version was introduced. This playing wth colours was
quite common on both BBC1 and BBC2. Often the idents were black and white with the colour
elements artificially generated on to the final image. It was therefore a trivial task to
change the colour of the idents. |
| Introduced between Christmas and New Year 1974 and used up until 1980. The alternate
blue and white lines come together from different directions to make the "2".
Whilst this reconstruction may look computer generated, the original was done the hard
way, a mechanical model with lines painted on a cylinder. |
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This clock was used around the same time as the ident above. A very simple design, it
was also used on BBC1. During the 1970's, BBC2 experimented with a number of clocks, some
of which only lasted a few days. |
Last Update 29 Mar 2000
