Back in 2000-2001, British 24hr science fiction channel Sci-Fi (now Sky Sci-Fi) had made a strange and surreal “Plug In” campaign.
An old intro of a German morning magazine called Guten Morgen Deutschland in 1994.
Its logo looked like Seven Nightly News, the clock was similar to the BBC’s Breakfast News and the sweet-natured music (composed by Frank Gari) was repurposed by TV One in New Zealand for its Breakfast program in 1997.
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December 1971. Rede Globo presents its traditional “Retrospectiva” program to review the year’s top stories. The style of this open is very groovy and psychedelic. Lots of pop artworks and music from Emerson, Lake & Palmer that fit properly with those times.
It was 25 years ago this week (3 April 2000) when those graphics and theme hit TV screens for the first time. The energetic sound brand was created by Sergio Vainikoff (again!), which had a “sports” vibe (he composed many themes for Torneos y Competencias for over two decades).
Vainikoff also made Telefe’s sound bumpers for its new idents, launched on that same day. Those were very soft and relaxing, like the announcer’s voice. I still can’t understand why the #1 network in the country chose to slow down for a while after 10 years with a cheerful and glossy appearance. Even the animation was minimal.
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The idents were created by Guillermo Stein’s practice Steinbranding. And yes, it was a real shock to see Telefe slowing down after 10 years, but worth noting the station and its affiliates had just been taken over by Telefónica, which placed the company under the oversight of its newly-created Telefónica Media division, later Admira Media. However, I don’t think this had to do with the unexpected rebrand.
The idents were tweaked in January 2001, to add the station’s new slogan: “Telefe, un sentimiento”. These tweaked idents, which reused cues composed by Vainikoff for the channel during the late 90s, ran for two months, and by March, these were replaced by new idents by Steinbranding, featuring new cues from Vainikoff himself. This change coincided with Telefe unifying the branding of its O&O stations.
By that spring, however, the idents were changed again: wanting to capitalise on the “Un sentimiento” campaign, the network commissioned singer-songwriter and TV presenter Manuel Wirzt to write, compose and sing a promo image song for the channel.
Despite the network being still number one in the ratings, it was clear these branding changes were a very odd fit for a lively and populist network. By Spring 2002, the “Un sentimiento” brand was dispensed in favour of “Telefe, Siempre”, an in-house job which modernised the network’s brand whilst embracing its cheerful brand equity. Once again, Vainikoff was in charge of the jingle.
Here’s one of Vainikoff’s more recent works: the 2013 theme used by the Fútbol para Todos programme initiative:
Fútbol para Todos was an initiative by the Kirchnerist governments to make Argentinian soccer accessible for free to the entire nation, using the resources of Canal 7/TV Pública to broadcast these matches nationally; some other national stations, including various pro-Kirchner outlets, also broadcast some of the matches. The move was caused by a financial dispute with Torneos y Competencias over paying the rights to the 2009 season earlier, over some financial woes by some squads; TyC rejected to pay early, allowing the Government to take over after paying 600 million Argentine pesos. This led to a lawsuit which has not been so far resolved.
Despite the lawsuit, the Government contracted Torneos to produce the matches; all interested parties were able to sign contracts with the Government free of charge on the condition of broadcasting the signal as provided by Torneos and TV Pública. Though it had exclusive sponsors during its latter years, the broadcasts were mostly commercial-free, with Government propaganda airing during intervals. Most of the commentators were often related with, and/or supported the Kirchner government. Despite its success in both ratings and coverage, opposition politicians strongly singled out and took notice of the political use of the broadcasts.
After a two year transition period, the Macri government decided to nix the initiative in 2017 and allowed the AFA to reinstate the pre-2009 model of premium pay-TV broadcasts, and retender the rights to any interested party; these rights were eventually sold to Fox and Turner, which created two new PPV/premium channels and teamed up to sell them in a single premium pack.
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In 1994, Singapore’s Channel 5 underwent a major rebrand as part of a shift to an exclusively Anglophone service, alongside the planned privatization of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (now MediaCorp). American graphic design company Novocom was hired to produce the look, and the channel adopted Gari Communications’ “Where It All Happens” music package.
This was particularly evident in their newscasts, which were split into 7pm and 10:30pm bulletins, known as News 5 at Seven (aimed at late workers who might have missed the previous 9pm bulletins) and News 5 Tonight (aimed at late night viewers) (unfortunately, the idea of a News 5 at Five missed them by a mile). They were later joined by what appeared to be a midday bulletin, News 5 Today, around next year (records seem spotty).
The graphics underwent modification that year, and the music was replaced with what seemed to be in-house compositions. “Where It All Happens” seemed to have returned by 1998, and remained in use until 2001. News 5 Today and News 5 at Seven were axed by 1999, and News 5 Tonight was moved to 9:30pm, where it remains to this day.
Recently uploaded to YouTube are two bulletins from October 1994, perhaps the height of this American-styled presentation: the 1 October edition of News 5 Tonight presented by Duncan Watt and Karen Ann Lam with Bertrand Bartlett on sports (top stories peacekeeping problems, an art outreach in Egypt, and an investment education program) and the 10 October edition of News 5 at Seven presented by Nicolette Tjoa and Christine Tan (top stories Singapore’s first gold at the Asian Games in 12 years and a report on strokes), followed by a promo for that day’s News 5 Tonight:
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A compilation of news opens from the defunct Valencian public TV network Canal Nou, launched on 9 October 1989 and shut down on 29 November 2013 due to financial reasons.
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In the UK in 2006, Player was a subscription TV channel showing sports and for some reason, action movies, then the same year, it changed its name to Bravo 2, a spin-off to men’s interest channel, Bravo, then it died in 2010.
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1985: 40 years ago, the BBC introduced computer-generated graphics for its weather reports. YouTuber Adam Martyn explains one of the biggest changes underwent by the Beeb.
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I’m a big fan of Adam’s channel. He produces some very fascinating stuff.
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Surprisingly, the aggresive format for Telefe’s newscasts returned in 2006, as the channel tried to be more competitive in the evenings by moving the nightly edition to 8pm (the start time of its archrival Telenoche). On Monday 13 November that year, a newsroom-studio was unveiled, along with new graphics. The main edition adopted a bold package with orchestral rock cuts, while the lunchtime and late-night bulletins kept their legendary 2002-03 themes.
The Marmol-Petrozzino duo remained as bosses, injecting a lot of “action” into the news: that meant more crime, sports, topical and gossip stories. Even the editing of some reports was very flashy!
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They’re ok, but too often they’re just rip and reads from RXTV with little original content.
Recently stumbled on this Spanish Youtuber introducing two old ‘interactive TV’ devices in the early 90s, as in “pressing buttons to something on TV other than change channels”…
This was Tele 5’s Teletrébol from 1993, with short quizzes held in the middle of a show to promote the gadget. Viewers would then press the (not even IR) remote for answer, phone a premium rate line and play the data recorded inside the remote, to determine if you’re the first to buzz in. A lot of room for data collection and fraud, from the premium rate number, ‘activation’ via membership and the resulting ‘winner’ had to go to court to get their prize.
The same gadget was launched in France two years prior, jointly by Antenne 2 and FR3, as Quizako, largely for edutainment shows. Interestingly, a different device, Multipoints, was developed for another Channel 5 in the Berlusconi family - La Cinq - before handing to FTV.
1993 also saw TVE with their Telepick, a device that was more technologically advanced (and more expensive) than Teletrébol. Shaped like a set-top box, it had a modem and a thermal printer built in, for viewers to receive and print information like recipes during a TV show. Like Teletrébol, it could let viewers participate in surveys and prized quizzes too.
It’s a bizarre combination in today’s eyes, a mark of a time when the internet was in its infancy and computer hardware was busy playing catch-up to cash in on the ‘information super highway’. Telepick was obviously one of the losers, with their customer service number now reused in a petrol station.
It’s fun to see how the definition for ‘interactive TV’ changed throughout the decade, since where I live also had a try with it later, as an early attempt to VOD, e-banking and e-commerce - a much broader vision than pressing buttons, but just a few years apart. Would like to write something about it here in the future…
With all of them failed, seems like its actual functionality was much narrower than the marketing and R&D people in telcos and broadcasters could come up…
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Sounds familiar… 
One singular thing about British television is how they covered sports. For years, the BBC and ITV had specific out-of-vision announcers who just read results of soccer games without commenting about them! Australian-born Len Martin did the honors for the Beeb and Bob Colston read at ITV. Here are examples of both at work:
That style was parodied by a familiar comedian before he switched to the medical profession
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Even Mel Smith put his two cents in
YouTube: stuffthefrankie
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24 years ago this week: Canal 13 Buenos Aires’ sign-on with soft music (time and temperature displayed on the screen), public information films, appeals and bits of that channel’s gorgeous (and never unmatched) 2001 visual package. One of my personal favourites! 