CBBC idents
Throughout the years, Children's BBC, and later CBBC and CBeebies, have used a number of different identities. The branding of the stranded service is distinctive both in the past and at present.
Pre Children's BBC
Prior to the launch of Children's BBC on 9 September 1985, BBC1 used some specialist branding for its children's strand. Continuity was done out of vision by the duty continuity announcer. However, between programmes, some special branding was put in use to reflect better the audience they were serving.In the 1970s, the programme caption was changed to a blue and yellow variation featuring the faces of a boy and girl, with references to other programmes: Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout, Scooby-Doo, and title cards and logos from Play School and Blue Peter. The slide was in fact coloured by the NODD system used to produce the globe at the time. The slide was later changed in 1981 to a group of children staring at the caption in excitement, following the change of globe. Promotions now featured slides of balloons, with the programme name in the centre, and occasionally accompanied by the official static captions.
Just prior to the launch of Children's BBC, a BBC Micro B 3D Collage was introduced to generate computer generated stings for the children's strand. Such animations were used to introduce programmes, such as a spider spinning down onto a detonator triggering the words Hello from BBC1, and to link into promotions for further programmes, such as a group of sky divers falling from a plane to spell out a 'Later' caption. However, despite the graphics, programmes were still directly introduced by the BBC1 globe symbol, albeit occasionally accompanied by a choice of two different 14-note synthesized tunes.
CBBC
Children's BBC (1985–1997)
Original Logo (1985–1991)
The first ident for Children's BBC once again made use of the BBC Micro B computer. The design featured the word 'Children's' on top of a large sprawled 'BBC' made up of the three colours red, green, and blue. In the ident, each letter of the BBC animated into the four note electronic soundtrack, with the Children's scrolling across afterwards. It originally had a blue background, but this was changed to black after a few months. The letters were also all turned yellow in autumn 1986, and were set against a white background whenever programmes were broadcast on BBC2.From the launch of the branding, live in-vision continuity was generally broadcast by a dedicated team of presenters from a small self-op Presentation studio within the BBC1 network control area at Television Centre. The presenter would talk, interact with other characters, and view children’s pictures and letters, many of which would end up on the dressed back wall of the booth. They would also operate sound and vision mixers to partially direct their own links, although overall responsibility for transmission belonged to duty transmission staff in the adjacent network control room.
For times when Children's BBC aired on BBC2, the presenter would appear in-vision from the network's self-op continuity studio, although this was not usually dressed with set branding and remained plain. A running joke would develop where the duty presenter would present their links in a dinner jacket because BBC2 was considered more highbrow. Promotions were of no particular style, with the promotion usually voiced by the duty presenter and featuring only the programme name and title at the bottom of the screen.
On 21 September 1987, the BBC Micro ident was replaced by one created using Cel animation. In this ident, each of the letters of the word 'Children's' was allocated an image beginning with that letter. These images - a car, a horse, an ice cream, a lighthouse, a duck, a rocket, an elephant, a number nine, and a ship - would all be drawn on screen by yellow wispy lines, which after drawing all the animals would animate out to draw the 'BBC' caption. This ident was played out from tape, as opposed to the live BBC Micro ident. These pictures also appeared on other Children's BBC items, such as stationery: letters sent from the Children's BBC office to children would have these images superimposed upon the background of the document.
During this time, the presenters began to devise new ways of filling the time slots, with competitions and features taking precedence. Alongside these new additions, changes were being made to BBC Presentation, and the Broom Cupboard itself. In 1989, the continuity booth was equipped with NICAM digital stereo, and as a result, Children's BBC presentation was moved temporarily to a smaller studio, nicknamed the 'Boiler Room'. This was based in a reserve network control area generally used between the two networks during maintenance or engineering work, from where the Broom Cupboard nickname had originated.
On 11 September 1989, the new ident was generated live on air by an Acorn Archimedes computer. The new ident featured a glossy, gold version of the familiar stylised BBC text, with pale green text for the 'Children's' caption and a dark green background superimposed with small stylised CBBC's in the same font as the main 'BBC' section of the logo. The ident formed up through the use of zig-zag lines and concentric circles, which continued to move around and between the letters.
Corporate Logo (1991–1997)
On 16 February 1991, BBC1 and 2 both relaunched with corporate branding packages based on a Virtual Globe and the antics of a numeral 2. Both packages had a similar promotional design and both featured a large numeral above a BBC logo at the bottom of the screen. As part of this relaunch, Children's BBC also received its own symbol based on this design. It was implemented at the beginning of the academic year on 9 September 1991. The new symbol took the emphasis away from the 'BBC' and placed it firmly with the 'Children's' part of the name. This new logo featured a large neon style letter replacing every other letter in the 'Children's' name, with the exception of 'D' which had a neon strip curve around the letter. This appeared against a dark background of an assortment of colours and accompanied by an upbeat soundtrack accompanied in some versions by a voice saying phrases such as "Tell that aardvark it's a wrap" and "Essential viewing coming up". The original electronic beat music was seen as too slow and dull originally, and so was replaced soon after with a more bombastic tune.Accompanied with the new look, the Broom Cupboard received a makeover with new neon signage matching the new logo as well as the presenters name in a similar style to the logo. In addition to this, Children's BBC also received a corporate styling for promotions, slides, and menus. Promotions were kept the same as the channel they were broadcast on, however the menu and slide design was unique. The slide design, in line with BBC1 and 2, featured a sidebar down the left hand side of the screen, with the channel logo located in the top left hand corner of the screen, above a BBC corporate logo. The Children's BBC slides however, also had the Children's BBC logo inserted sideways into the sidebar, and images from the ident featured as the background to programme menus. These slides and menus were used prior to a start-up into Children's BBC, and for promotional use outside of Children's BBC itself, for example after the morning strand was completed.
Periodically, BBC Scotland had their own versions of the 1990s idents only used for local school holiday programmes around this time, by using the same ones as the network but with the Scotland branding incorporated into the ident beneath the BBC logo. These versions were used for regional breakfast and mid-morning opt-outs on BBC One Scotland and BBC Two Scotland from the launch of Children's BBC Scotland in June 1992 to July 1997.
This logo remained with Children's BBC until 1997, however the ident itself changed within half that time. In 1994, Children's BBC moved out of the soon-to-be-decommissioned network control area, bringing an end to the Broom Cupboard era, and into the larger Pres A studio which had been used for birthday slots, weekend, and holiday strands. To mark the move, CBBC, as it was becoming increasingly known informally by the presenters, commissioned a new ident. Launched on 5 September 1994, the logo remained, however was rendered in 3D and set at a slight angle and formed in chunks. This was accompanied by a 3D BBC logo located in the bottom right corner of the screen, and set against a moving rainbow coloured background with bits of black on it. This was later replaced in 1996 by a version on a moving yellow background, with a 2D grey BBC logo.
Throughout this era, a variety of logos were produced by BBC Manchester's Graphic design department for use, that featured computer-generated animations or cartoons and would include the Children's BBC logo in it somewhere, either as a whole or in part, and often accompanied by the BBC logo.
CBBC (1997–present)
Yellow animations (1997–2002)
On 4 October 1997, the new BBC logo was launched by the corporation, and all of the BBC's channels and services received a makeover. CBBC was no exception, with a new logo and idents package to match a newly refurbished set for TC9. The new logo was seen everywhere on every channel in near identical design, so that the BBC's output was centralised, and as a result CBBC's logo featured a 'C' added in front of the BBC block logo, with the name of the service added after, be it CBBC One, CBBC Two, CBBC Choice, CBBC Scotland, or CBBC on Nickelodeon. Whereas before, CBBC tried to portray the end of one service and the beginning of another, which look made it feel like CBBC was taking over that service.The new idents all featured a yellow and black colour scheme and featured a two-dimensional animation based around a surreal concept, an interesting design, or an adventure scene. Promotions for the service featured the same promotional style as the other services, with the CBBC logo at the bottom and the programme and channel details centred at the bottom for widescreen, which came later in early 2002. Also getting a makeover was the set in TC9. Again following the yellow and black theme, notable parts include large CBBC logos extending upright the columns, a large video wall made up of 12 televisions, and a desktop computer used to promote the CBBC website.
In addition to these idents, there was also idents for the programmes Saturday Aardvark and the CBBC Breakfast Show. BBC Scotland also had their own versions of the late 1990s idents only used for local school holiday programmes around this time, by using the same ones as the network but with the Scotland branding incorporated into the ident beneath the BBC logo. These versions were used for regional mid-morning opt-outs only on BBC Two Scotland from June 1998 to July 2000, since no Children's BBC Scotland opt outs were screened on BBC One Scotland since they moved to BBC Two Scotland for the remainder of the late 1990s.
Special idents were commissioned for Christmas, from 1997 to 1999, they consisted of a periscope type animation with festive images appearing, and from 2000 to 2001, there were various idents with a small penguin and a snowman in various scenarios. In summer, the 'CBBC HOT' name was used. An animation was also introduced for the end copyright, originally a coin spinning and falling over before turning into a thick line, this later became numerous signs moving towards the viewer from 1999 to 2002. On Monday 3 September 2001, CBBC switched to widescreen and as a result, the branding was altered. Some idents were withdrawn entirely, while the rest were sped up or mixed in with others to form montages that were used instead. The music was also changed, with two versions now used: for CBBC's older viewers and for CBBC's younger viewers, in what would soon be called CBeebies. Additionally, the idents for preschool programming had clips from Tweenies mixed in.
Special idents were made for CBBC on Choice before they started using the regular ones from 1998 to 2000. They were based on the first set of BBC Choice idents from 1998 consisting of three items with similar names, like boxer shorts, boxing gloves, and a boxer dog.