A 1953 promotional film about the world’s first UHF television station:
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We’ve talked about Martin Lambie-Nairn, but Neville Brody another British designer who did great TV work in the 1990s, notably for ORF in Austria. Here are some examples of ORF’s 1993 on-air identity:
Share-time channels, like the example above or the Thames/LWT split in the UK, were rare in the United States, but not unheard-of, especially in the early days of television. This article provides a nice overview:
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Some bumpers and idents from Canal 13 Buenos Aires used from March until November 2001. These idents were centered around elements of nature such as water, fire or bubbles.
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Neville Brody also did the launch identity of Germany’s first Pay-TV channel, Premiere, which was created by a partnership of Leo Kirch, Canal+ and Bertelsmann/UFA. The channel operated on the same model of its French partner, with encrypted broadcast of new movies (mostly sourced from Kirch’s catalog) and live sport (including a top Bundesliga match and boxing), as well as live events and documentaries, alongside unencrypted original programming (including an exact imitation of Canal+'s Le Zapping). Premiere also used the Syster set-top-box from Canal+. It was a very successful effort from Kirch, but it was never profitable financially.
Still in the Kirch fold, in 1996, as the Premiere venture, although successful, was causing massive problems on the corporate side, the group went all in in its own and launched its DF1 digital satellite package, which was sold separately from Premiere (which was also launched on digital) and offered a selection of mostly-original channels, all of which used the Kirch libraries (most notably the distribution of MGM films in the German-speaking countries). The lack of Premiere content made the DF1 offering unsuccessful, not helped by many German state governments forbidding DF1’s satellite distribution, forcing Kirch to sign wholesale deals with regional cable broadcasters. These problems resulted on Kirch taking over Canal+'s and Bertelsmann’s stakes on Premiere and force merging it with DF1 on October 1999 as Premiere World. The DF1 brand was designed by Pittard Sullivan.
After the Kirch empire went bust in 2002, Premiere was taken over by a consortium of Bavarian banks and was later sold to risk investment firm Permira. Thanks to this rescue measure, by 2005, Premiere floated into the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. After a controversy surrounding the naming of a new basic wholesale offering (which would be eventually named Premiere Star), Premiere agreed to license the Sky name from BSkyB as part of the lawsuit settlement. On July 2009, Premiere was renamed Sky, using a brand identity separate from the BSkyB fold, but adopting that company’s logo; the brand was designed by venturethree and DMC Group, the Sky Film channels rehashed the Sky Movies idents then used by BSkyB (designed by Dunning Eley Jones, a now-defunct agency founded by three former Lambie-Nairn designers). By 2014, BSkyB had taken over the entirety of Sky Deutschland, and its brand and products were eventually aligned with the British side of the company.
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An example of a share-time channel not mentioned in the article is Los Angeles-based KWHY-TV. After the SelecTV subscription TV channel closed down in 1989, channel 22 decided to refocus its evening fringe programming to Spanish-language programming from Galavisión, then a cable network owned by Televisa which aired original programming from its Mexican FTA networks. KWHY saw the move as a need to target Latinxs in Los Angeles, including a large Mexican population which was being underserved by its Spanish rivals KMEX (Univision) and KVEA (Telemundo).
Additionally, Televisa was planning to convert Galavisión to a broadcast network, hence the signing of the deal with KWHY, however, the plans were halted after the FCC forbid the then-dominant Mexican broadcaster to operate the network as such, given the restrictions on foreign-owned media and its monopoly practices in Mexico. In 1992, Televisa took back a small stake in Univision and sold the American Galavision operation to Univision.
Back to KWHY, after Galavision was pulled, their management was able to retain Televisa’s library of Mexican classic movies, whilst adding more local shows and its own news programming, which had been historically less focused on cross-border issues reporting and more on community needs and events and other tabloid stories. KWHY also began airing more entertainment programming and game shows from other Latin American countries.
The success of the Spanish programming led to the time-share agreement being dropped in 1999, with business news moving to KJLA (channel 57), which historically had focused on Asian/Korean programming. In 2001, this move was further cemented by an acquisition deal with Telemundo, forming a duopoly which survived Telemundo’s takeover by NBC (forming a triopoly formed by KNBC, KVEA and KWHY); Telemundo continued programming KWHY independently from KVEA; and was sold to local investment firm Meruelo Group after Comcast took over NBCUniversal in 2011. After a stint with the failed MundoFox/MundoMax network, KWHY is now an affiliate of another Mexican network, Multimedios Televisión, based out of Monterrey.
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Oprah Winfrey reading the news? Yes, but in the late 1970s/early 1980s. This is an excerpt from WJZ Baltimore in April 1978, 5 years prior to her move to Chicago (where she became a big star).
The current opener of CBC Canada’s main evening news program The National, hosted by Ian Hanomansing.
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Probably a different category to the likes of those in the article, which were two completely separate licences with separate callsigns (such as the WPWR/WBBS situation in Chicago) rather than the one licence but with time blocks serving two very different purposes.
I guess KWHY still acted as if it was separate with the change each night to Spanish - which is probably fair enough given the separation SelecTV had previously gave them outside of the business news hours.
It’s interesting to read up on how long the business news portion lasted - from the mid 60s (!) all the way up to the turn of the century (practically). Probably why I’d struggle to call it a timeshare, as it appears to have been run in-house for at least the vast majority of its life - which for its time would have been quite amazing.
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A 1990s promo about the differences between CNN and its sister channel Headline News:
A 1985 English-language newscast from Oman Television:
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Most of an edition of Spanish regional channel Television de Galicia (TVG)'s newscast Telexornal from early December 2002, during the Prestige oil spill disaster that affected the area.
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An episode of Scottish TV’s local magazine Artery that takes a behind-the-scenes look at how the STV/Grampian 2000 idents were made.
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MundoFox was a short-lived Spanish-language U.S. network operated by Fox (News Corp.) and Colombia-based RCN. Here’s a 2013 newscast from its South Florida affiliate, WGEN:
In 2015, Fox sold its stake in the channel, which then became known as MundoMax. It folded in 2016, with most of its affiliates joining Estrella TV.
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Speaking of MundoFox, the Fox part of the business was not owned by the Fox network outright, but by Fox International Channels (later Fox Networks Group), which operated the international Fox channels globally, and which was greatly and quickly expanding under the direction of Argentinian media executive Hernán López, including buying Turkish network TGRT and relaunching it as Fox in 2007, and additionally launching local versions of its suite of global channels in that country.
With RCN’s involvement, allowing access to a large library of original telenovelas and formats, and Fox owning, by then, Colombian content producer TeleColombia, by then renamed FoxTeleColombia (now owned by Paramount and since merged with VIS), allowing them to begin the production of original series for Latin American audiences, News Corp wanted to offer a sophisticated alternative to its longer-established rivals; Univision with its heavy provision of Mexican telenovelas, and Telemundo’s increasing level of original shows, specially, action and crime-oriented series. Alongside content from both broadcasters, including a heavy dose of action-oriented series (such as El Capo, inspired by the Mexican drug war, psychological dramas Tiempo Final and Kdabra, both produced for Fox Latin America, and the legendary telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea, which inspired a dozen adaptations, including Ugly Betty), it also aired dubbed Brazilian series (provided by RecordTV) and the Turkish drama Muhteşem Yüzyıl.
Another core part of the schedule was the airing of feature films provided by 20th Century Fox and its subsidiaries, both dubbed films and Latin American movies distributed by the studio; it also initially aired 20CF Television series from the US (it never notably aired The Simpsons, but it did air select Fox series such as Bones and American Dad!). The channel also poached the popular Mexican game show host Marco Antonio Regil to present the Latino versions of Family Feud and Minute to Win It, and aired a daily block of Nat Geo shows, including a weekend E/I compliant kids block. It would later produce a Latino version of The X Factor, which also aired on Fox Latin America.
The channel also profited from its owners’ resources in news and sport, with a news division being handled by Noticias RCN from Los Angeles. Although the newsroom was (good for them) independent from that of Fox News, it still shared some content with them. RCN pioneered the broadcast of two separate live editions, both airing from LA, with Rolando Nichols from KWHY as anchor and veteran Univision executive Jorge Mettey as SVP of News Content; the newsroom also hired Max Aub from Telemundo as Chief Correspondent, Carolina Sarassa from Univision as East Coast Correspondent and Peggy Carranza as New York Correspondent; it also hired former WSVN anchor Rick Sanchez and former Mexican President Vicente Fox as contributors, and also profited from RCN’s presenters and reporters in Colombia.
The newscast, with a centre-right alignment which was less extreme than that of Fox News and Noticias RCN, was unique on its format, as it aired live in both eastern and western editions (instead of a live eastern edition and a tape-delayed western edition with occasional updates), but its content was mostly fact-based, with an emphasis on cross-border reporting (specially relating to Mexican-related issues, with emphasis on the ongoing drug war affecting the country) and a human-interest approach to covering the news; even with its low ratings, it managed to get a number of scoops and exclusives (some of them controversial, with one being retracted due to allegations of ethical issues) which at least garnered the news service some national and international awareness. Additionally, the show targeted a progressive Latino audience by offering a daily segment on Spanish language rules for non-proficient speakers, and it also aired a segment featuring RCN Noticias anchors, reporters and correspondents covering issues on other Latin American nations.
In sports programming, MundoFox never got high-profile rights other than Spanish coverage of UFC fights, but it managed to share resources with Fox Sports and Fox Deportes, including airing a weekly analysis show which was branded under the Central Fox moniker used by their newscasts, produced out of Mexico City; the news division also produced a short-lived entertainment and gossip magazine, Que No Te Cuenten, and a late-night broadcast designed to compete with tabloid newsmagazine Primer Impacto, MundoFox y Ya!.
Even if Fox and RCN were hoping that the success story of Fox would be replicated in the Latino network, it would become eventually unsuccessful; although it had in its affiliate payroll a number of full-power stations, like the aforementioned KWHY in Los Angeles, and WGEN in Miami (which was, coincidentally, owned at the time by a company related to RCN’s arch-rival Caracol), most of its affiliates were low-power stations. Still, an offshoot of the network was launched on selected cable networks in Latin America in mid-2013, which only offered the entertainment content of the American network, with added special concert and music content featuring Latin artists. With Fox International Channels trying to refocus on its profitable brands after the News Corp/21st Century Fox spin-off, 21CF sold its stake in MundoFox to RCN in 2015; after taking immediate control, RCN closed the news division due to its unprofitability, laying off all employees and announced the rename of the network as MundoMax; the new branding was implemented in stages until fully rebranding in August. These moves didn’t save the network: RCN announced the closing of the network one year later due to its low ratings. Many of its affiliates switched to Estrella TV, whose low-brow content was, however, allowing them to be increasing in line with its competitors; this move further expanded the network’s reach, but in the long term would get them in business troubles.
The network’s brand identity went in the line of Fox’s international channels, sharing many of the elements used by the brand at the time. These were designed by Argentinian studio Superestudio, which was one of the main providers of graphic design from Fox; this was made under the direction of Fox executive Corina Capuano-Saccone; she still handles the same duties for Disney’s networks in the Americas, as well as overseeing the look of the American FX Networks. The American network’s graphics were colored red, those from the Latin American offshoot were colored orange.
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You should write a book on global TV history, Medianext! I’m being serious.
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Bits and pieces of South Africa’s SABC from the 1980s (some clean, others via French and British documentaries about South African TV):
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Back to Fox territory, and specifically to the case of Turkey, here’s what happened.
In 2006, Turkish conglomerate İhlas Holding decided to sell TGRT, one of the first Turkish satellite channels, due to the group’s major economical problems; these problems had already caused the conglomerate to temporarily lose ownership of TGRT after being seized in 2001 by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund of Turkey, before returning the ownership to İhlas three years later. Risking another seizure of their ownership, they decided to sell the channel (but not its all-news, docos and radio/music channels, which remained in İhlas ownership). After months of conversations, on July 25, 2006, İhlas announced that News Corp had agreed to buy TGRT’s license holder, Huzur Radyo TV A.Ş., as well as TGRT’s facilities and license for 98 million US dollars (around 127 million Turkish lira). News Corp was financially supported on the acquisition by Turkish-American businessman and record executive Ahmet Ertegün, co-founder and president of Atlantic Records.
News Corp placed oversight of Fox in the Fox International Channels division. Hernán López hired British executive David Parker Reid as general manager, which installed a leadership of Turkish media and executive veterans to allow the channel to cater local tastes: Hakan Etus from DHL Turkey served as CFO, Koray Altinsoy was hired as VP of Programming, and Doğan Şentürk, a veteran news director which had worked on installing Star TV’s and Kanal D’s newsrooms, was hired to lead the news programming.
The channel was renamed Fox on February 24, 2007, with a big gala launch. The channel quickly became the most successful launch of a Turkish national channel since the start of commercial TV; from the outset, Fox conformed to the programming standards of Turkish commercial channels, including a strong focus on local productions, including weekly series and soap operas, as well as benefitting from Murdoch’s big cash buckets to boost TGRT’s news department; from the outset, Fox has offered two daily newscasts, one in the morning and and a main edition in the evening, featuring popular Turkish newsreaders from the outset: Nazlı Tolga, Fatih Portakal, Selçuk Tepeli and Gülbin Tosun, among others. Fox’s newscasts are often regarded as the most balanced by Turkish media analysts, and its coverage its often regarded as (cautiously) critical of the Erdogan regime.
Fox’s focus on local series and news have come to define the channel’s brand, but it also airs a wide range of other content. Fox Turkey doesn’t air any American series or shows, but it has however stood in line graphically with Fox’s global counterparts, although with heavy variations, including recolored versions and/or special music for the idents and bumpers. For a time, instead of using any kind of Fox international graphics, it took the look of its now-divested Serbian counterpart (now Prva TV).
Thanks to the success of Fox, News Corp began investing on launching cable channels for the local audience. The first one to launch was a local version of Fox Sports, which brought American sports properties for the first time to Turkey; followed by a local FX, which offered Fox’s American series and movies; these shows aired dubbed in Turkish, but Fox would later pioneer in the country the adoption of SAP tracks to allow broadcast of the series with its original soundtrack. Local versions of Fox Life, Fox Crime and 24Kitchen would soon follow, alongside the launch of a specific Turkish feed of the National Geographic Channel (and the subsequent launch of Nat Geo Wild) to replace the Central European feed, with dubbed imports and additional local content. Most of these channels were closed after the big Disney takeover.
Another lesser known Fox channel comes from Finland. It originally launched in December 2009 as Suomi TV. The channel, launched as part of the Finnish government’s decision to launch a fourth national network to compete with Yle, MTV3 and Nelonen, and increase FTA television options in the country, was owned by Family Channel Suomi, a consortium led by Canadian broadcaster Astral Media and some Finnish investors; the channel was designed to offer a family-friendly approach to content, including airing exclusively children’s shows during daytime and upmarket content during prime time. Although it launched strongly, the channel began to be botched by problems, including big financial woes and accusations of censorship during programmes; as a result, Astral sold out its participation in Family Channel; in consequence, the remaining investors pursued mass cuttings, including the suspension of news programmes and reducing original productions to the minimum.
With financial woes continuing, Family Channel/Suomi TV was taken over by News Corp/21st Century Fox at the end of 2011; as a result, on April 2012, Suomi TV was renamed Fox. Although more American series and Fox-produced fare were introduced, resulting on audiences gradually increasing, Fox was obliged to retain news programming (which it did by simulcasting Sky News in the overnights and early mornings) and air children’s shows in daytime slots. However, a new license was issued to them by the Finnish regulators in 2018 which removed both obligations; almost immediately, the Sky News simulcasts were dropped, and the children’s block was dropped in mid-2021, as Disney has an exclusivity deal for its family content with rival MTV3. The channel has since being relaunched as an adult entertainment channel, focused on airing American series and reality shows (subtitled in Finnish, as is standard with imports in Scandinavian TV) with some local fare, and has retained a small, but loyal audience. Since January 6, Fox Finland became the second Fox channel to drop the brand and switch to the new Star Channel brand already in place in Latin America (BTW, the Turkish channel can’t switch to Star Channel, as the brand conflicts with its rival Star TV; that was the same reason the Star hub on Disney+ had to be branded as More Entertainment/Daha Fazla Eğlence).
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Two idents from the defunct German channel Der Kabelkanal, the predecessor of Kabel 1.
A news opener and segment from WRC-TV in Washington D.C. on Election Day 1972 (Tuesday 7 November), presented by Glenn Rinker and the great Jim Vance.
Some pages from Ceefax and BBC1’s sign-on in early December 1994.
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A compilation of IDs, elements and promos from Canal 9 Buenos Aires in 2002. The branding and logo were introduced in August that year due to an ownership change: the station was purchased by journalist and businessman Daniel Hadad, who brought a populist style to the schedule. The identity lasted one year (with some variations) and were inspired by an American news channel.
That logo certainly looked like a police siren! 
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The acquisition of Canal 9 by Hadad was very controversial; it immediately sparked allegations of political meddling, as Hadad was close to former Argentinian president Carlos Menem and Fernando de la Rúa; additionally, Argentina was still in a massive economical and political crisis. However, the acquisition had to be done as the Prime Media Group had sold the channel to Spanish monopoly telco Telefónica (through J.P. Morgan), and Telefónica already owned a large stake on rival Telefe.
Hadad, as you said, tried to revive the channel by all means and forms, in an attempt to return the frequency to its glory days under Alejandro Romay. However, in contrast to the “tutti-frutti” output largely put on by Romay, Hadad decided to go all-in in news content, alongside a lot of tabloid output, political shows (all which Hadad had produced for other Buenos Aires channels, such as América) and large blocks of movies.
Hadad also put a massive advertising blitz to advertise the return of Canal 9, including full page ads in newspapers and massively promoting the channel on its own press publications. The channel used a song by Argentinian musician Diego Torres, Color Esperanza, which was by then a hit in the nation and in many Latin American countries, for its launch adverts.
However, when the channel relaunched, viewers only saw most of Azul TV’s content being rehashed in the schedule, with few new programs. This didn’t spark viewers interest; additionally, the infamous “siren” logo quickly had to be altered due to its negative connotations. By 2003, the output has been once again altered, by adding popular presenters and many historical programes aired in Argentinian television, for example, Gerardo Sofovich, whose programming moved to the channel. Additionally, Mr. Hadad attempted to present a breakfast show in the style of Víctor Hugo Morales’ Desayuno; this quickly and miserably failed, with Hadad retiring from presentation after just three weeks. Graphically, the “siren” was replaced by an orange whirlwind design from Medialuna (now Tónika).
Still without fortunes altered, Hadad successfully lured Marcelo Tinelli and his production company Ideas del Sur to take on an exclusivity contract with the channel in 2005, including moving his daily variety show Videomatch to the channel; it additionally launched a new look and promo campaign, “Donde Vos Estás”, with new graphics from Steinbranding, the office of Guillermo Stein. This would eventually be the turning point for the channel; in April 2005, his variety show, renamed Showmatch (due to the original brand being owned by Telefe), debuted to very strong ratings, and the three series he produced for the channel also had a big following; this allowed Canal 9 to become more competitive and attain a second place in that year’s ratings, beating longstanding runner-up Canal 13. This went noticed by Artear, which, in a bidding war, successfully lured Tinelli to an exclusivity contract which is still valid until today.
This situation turned the fortunes upside down, as Canal 9, even with still strong content, went back to third place in the ratings. However, Hadad was quickly losing money as its Infobae printed newspaper was turning into the red; as a result, he had to sell the channel to Mexican raid investor Remigio Ángel González by 2007. Hadad retained a minority shareholder and editorial control of the channel until the end of that year. The money obtained from the sale was used by Hadad to launch the biggest competitor to Todo Noticias and Crónica TV in years; C5N, which in its first years, became heavily inspired by CNN, at a degree that even the channel’s graphics were an outright knockoff.
The channel was practically dismantled by González, who cut costs by only retaining the daily news programming as the lone original content produced by the channel, hence, the channel became derogatorily named as “el canal de las latas”. However, as the new Media Law was passed, which forced the production of a certain quota of local shows, from 2010, the channel began increasing the level of original content, with most of the channel’s schedule being occupied by local shows by 2020, when González sold the channel to union leader Víctor Santa María.
Here’s a showreel of the channel’s graphics from its early Romay days up to 2021. The current logo is often nicknamed as “the pink donut”, mainly because the abstract representation of the 9 figure strongly resembles a donut, and also to compare it with Canal 13’s sun logo.
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An interesting YouTube video about the history of UHF television in the U.S.:
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An interesting journey through time; the evolution of news opens used by WTVT in Tampa, Florida (originally a CBS affiliate, now a Fox O&O), since the 1950s:
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