There was another channel named Monte Carlo (not related to the European stations): channel 4 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Here are some idents from 2 different periods: 1996 and 2001.
In 2019, Monte Carlo dropped its longtime name (used for over 5 decades) and adopted the Canal 4 brand, along with a new logo.
Crossing to the other side of the Rio de la Plata, the first minutes of an edition of ATC’s nightly newscast Noticiero Nacional from Tuesday 30 August 1988, read by journalist Monica Gutierrez. The bulletin had a minimalistic set: a desk, a microphone attached to it and a well-known satellite picture of the Earth superimposed on the screen.
The theme was composed by a popular musician called Lito Vitale: he’s also featured in the opening credits. A slightly different version of the piece was commercially released in one of his albums. Here’s a beautiful rendition of this song, performed by the orchestra of the National University of San Juan in 2018, where Vitale also takes part playing the piano and the synthesizer.
Canada was one of the first countries with widespread cable TV. Here’s an excerpt from Martin Mayer’s 1972 book 𝘈𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘛𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯:
By the way, thanks to Mathew Sittle’s wonderful website, here’s the 1973 channel lineup for the Vancouver/Western BC edition of TV Guide with all the channels mentioned above, including the cable-only Channel 10:
The cable penetration was so high that several stations identified themselves with their cable channel positions rather than its usual OTA numbers. Here’s the case of Calgary’s CFCN: its OTA channel was 4, but it used the cable numbers 3 and 5 at different points to brand itself.
In Canada, I believe the regulator prohibited cable systems from assigning stations the same channel as their broadcast signals to prevent cable/terrestrial interference. This discrepancy in channel number caused most Canadian stations to eventually drop their channel numbers from their on-air identities; some, like CFCN in the video above, used their call letters before adopting their network’s identities.
In the U.S., however, most VHF stations retained the same channel on cable. It was only the higher-positioned UHF stations that got reassigned different channel numbers on cable.
In heavily cabled San Diego, for instance, KNSD was long known on-air as NBC 7/39, referencing both its cable allocation and its UHF broadcast channel:
An ident compilation of German TV channel VOX from 1993 until 2020.
Some wonderful design there! Another cable/satellite channel with great on-air design was European Business News (EBN), with graphics designed by the late Martin Lambie-Nairn. The channel was set up in 1995 and ended up merging with CNBC Europe in 1998, but it made quite an impression during its short existence. Here’s a clip showing some of its feature-oriented weekend programming, which gives you a good sense of the graphics:
A brief introduction to the weird world of North Korean television:
Here are two interesting books on this subject, one focusing on BSB…
…and the other on Sky:
Yep, I think the YT thing linked to said it was based pretty much on Dished! as much of its source. It’s certainly an intriguing story all the same.
The identities made by Lambie-Nairn were absolutely creative and groundbreaking! 
Here’s a junction from other channel rebranded by L-N: Switzerland’s Italian-language station TSI (1994).
VOX has had a quite striking presentation style during its entire existence, which has been as troubled as that of many pioneering satellite channels in Europe.
VOX was launched in 1993 as a response to the increasing popularity of RTL and Sat.1. In 1990, the German states signed a broadcasting treaty, the Westschienen-Staatsvertrag, which, alongside the integration of former East German broadcaster into the ARD, it stipulated the launch of a third commercial channel to offer an alternative to the populist output of the other two rivals (nicknamed Nordschienenkanal and Südschienenkanal, referring to RTL being a Luxembourgian outcast and Sat.1 being then based from Baden-Baden). On 1991, the consortium which would operate the channel, Westscheinenkanal, was formed, with NRW state banks and Bertelsmann-UFA being the largest stakeholders; its license was given by the NRW media watchdog on December.
The VOX name was unveiled in 1992. Its artsy and unconventional brand was designed by Dietz & Partners (who made the iconic red dot logo) and Meiré & Meiré; at the same time, many of its initial personalities were hired, with ZDF heute journal editor Ruprecht Eser hired as initial program director and Wibke Bruhns, Germany’s first woman newsreader, hired as one of the chief anchors. Its program schedule had the Event TV (Ereigniskanal) concept, with a focus on serious news and current affairs, with bulletins airing every hour during the broadcast day, which extended even to news-focused variety shows, lifestyle programming (including the travelogue staple Voxtours), and even children’s programming with an intellectual tone. Time was also allocated to stakeholder dctp, co-owned by Düsseldorf newspaper Die Zeit and newsmagazine Der Spiegel, with documentary strands using both strands airing on a regular basis.
The channel went on air at 5pm on January 25, 1993, replacing another pioneering satellite channel, WHSmith-owned Lifestyle, in the Astra satellite. Many of its initial programming was critically acclaimed due to its innovative takes on current affairs programming, including a Media Watch-style magazine, Canale Grande, hosted by comedian Dieter Moor (who was known for greeting viewers as Liebe Zielgruppe!, and even stripping out at the end of the first show), and sex-related newsmagazine Liebe Sünde, produced and anchored by Matthias Frings. However, lacking the resources and gravitas of its PSB counterparts, who increased the levels of news programming in response to the arrival of that station and Time Warner-owned n-tv, VOX soon suffered from low ratings and went bust quickly after losing millions of Marks in revenue.
As a result, during the summer, the Event TV concept was dropped in favor of a more conventional focus, including acquiring classic American series and movies and exclusive rights to the US Open. This caused even more drain into the channel’s finances, and on April 1, 1994, the channel went into administration whilst remaining on-air. News programming was outsourced to Der Spiegel’s newsroom, and many of the original programmes were dropped or moved to other channels (for example, Liebe Sünde moved to ProSieben). Bertelsmann, who by then owned a large stake on rival RTL, wanted to reposition the channel as a sister offering to it to no success.
Six months later, Fox and Canal+ took over a large stake on the channel, with the channel quickly establishing itself as a semi-general entertainment channel, focusing on magazine and feature formats, American series and movies (mostly of the procedural and crime genres) and reality-oriented docuseries. In 1999, RTL took over a majority stake back from Fox and Canal+. The channel has since become a so-called “quality” sister to the more populist RTL, resulting on increasing ratings between 2007 and 2012. It also launched a sister channel, VOXup, in 2018, targeting a female audience and serving as a counterpart to RTLup, both airing archive programming (both original and acquired) from their respective channels.
I have always had a fond memory of EBN. The channel was launched, as you said, by Dow Jones & Company, which was trying to explore new consumer media ventures, as rivals Reuters and Bloomberg were already eating on that market, with DJ leaving out of it for many years. The initial experience for this was the launch, in November 1993, of Asia Business News, based out of Singapore, in an attempt to cater to the then-expanding cable market, with many countries liberalizing their TV industries and allowing cable TV in their respective nations. ABN also came on air at a particular time, as the Asian economy was then quickly booming. ABN’s graphics were never as quite good as those of EBN, as shown by the ident montage here below:
Then in 1995, EBN was launched. EBN had a string of business news veterans, including Ed Mitchell, Michael Wilson, Peter Sahwa and Penny Smith, alongside new hirings which include Becky Anderson and Jo Sheldon. American executive Michael Connor, who was leading Dow Jones’ television efforts at the time, was hired as executive director, developing its unique, laidback brand identity and programming concept for its schedule, branching out of business day content for other business-related programming, reaching the gamut of politics, media, entertainment and sport.
The brand identity was designed by Lambie-Nairn, under the direction of Brian Eley, Celia Chapman and Terry Watkins; Joe Glasman (Hum Music) provided the channel’s unique, organic and aerial sonic branding. According to ML-N himself, on his book Brand Identity for Television: With Knobs On (Phaidon Press, 1997), the rebrand wanted to reflect “the wit, style and authority of the channel’s broadcasting” with a “central device […] a lens-like roundel, incorporating the EBN initials. As images pass behind the roundel they are altered in some way: clarified or enhanced, magnified or turned to negative to positive. There is no one corporate colour (sic); instead a range of bright colours dispels any perception of the business world as one of grey uniformity”. Lambie-Nairn was responsible for every aspect of the EBN brand during its entire existence.
Then, as we know, the CNBC-Dow Jones merger happened, and ABN and EBN were merged into their respective CNBC offerings by January 1998.
In the same ML-N book, there is a lengthy look at how the TSI brand was made. This was done over a three year process led by ML-N himself and Sarah Davies, with Daniel Barber behind the idents and bumpers. According to ML-N, overspill Italian channels were eating on TSI’s audiences, and its lack of a real brand strategy was a part of that process. Working with Augusto Chollet (then head of presentation at the broadcaster) and Armando Bardinello (factual director), it was decided to refocus the brand on the quality of its news and current affairs content, but also make the brand more attractive to younger audiences and reflect the Swiss-Italian culture of the region and its link to the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (including retaining its diamond logo, which was being dropped by the German and French-speaking services).
The result was the masked troubadour, a designed from fashionist Michele Januzzi, which was deliberately designed not to be neither aristocratic nor contemporary, but also reflected the Swiss-Italian culture. The figure became popular with audiences and three ident series were made between 1994 and 1996, with the troubadour figure being even imitated as a disguise in the Lugano and Venice Carnivals by locals. It managed to stay three years on the air, being dropped in 1997 as the TSI launched its second channel.
The same book also offers a closer look at how ML-N’s two best known works (to the date) were done: the Channel 4 brand and the 1991 BBC rebrand. Given the book was published before the 1997 BBC rebrand, it doesn’t give the look on such. It is out of print currently, but it can be found on second hand shops. I was lucky enough to get a copy of it, but it was really expensive.
The book also delves deeper on some lesser-known works by him, including BBC World, ITN, S4C, British Satellite Broadcasting, Tele 5 Germany, VTM in Belgium, TV1000 and Kanal 5 in Scandinavia, TVI in Portugal, TVNorge, Eurosport, VGTRK in Russia and The Disney Channel; it also offers a quite decent study on the Carlton TV idents I mentioned earlier in the year, and why they were replaced in 1996 by these quite cool idents:
As I mentioned, ML-N was also behind the 1997 BBC rebrand, and his tribute channel published this interesting internal video on the then-upcoming changes:
Closer to home, in NZ, ML-N also developed the launch of Sky’s general entertainment channel, then known as Orange (now Sky 5).
His tribute channel has also a quite decent number of works to see, as well as many of his TV appearances throughout the years.
Wow! Your incredibly informative post make me regret that I can only tap the like button once.
Here’s a clip with a nice sampler of Vox’s graphics from 1993:
As well as Play UK (the original name of Yesterday)?
I’m afraid Play UK (and even the UKTV network) is not covered in the book.
Those Orange idents are still some of my favorites to come out of ML-N. Very creative.
That’d make sense as the book came out in the early part of 1997 (February it appears), several months before the UKTV network expanded beyond the original station of UK Gold. Play UK started in 1998.
A behind-the-scenes look at KTLA in Los Angeles from 1960; note the early use of live helicopter newsgathering at the 10:30 mark:
