{"id":206,"date":"2023-10-14T09:55:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T08:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kecskebak.hu\/?p=206"},"modified":"2023-11-19T09:03:43","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T08:03:43","slug":"measure-for-measure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kecskebak.hu\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Measure for Measure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BBC Television presentation had an inordinate amount of care put into it in the late 1950s and early 1960s. That may not seem surprising to people today, in an era when BBC Television presentation has a similar amount of effort put into it and has done for decades. However, there was a time between the mid 1970s and the mid 1980s when the BBC\u2019s presentation was shabby, cheap and ugly. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up during this dark era of BBC Television Presentation. It was the era of the revolting Futura BBC1 logo which coexisted with the gaudy neon BBC1 logo designed by Alan Jeapes, punctuated by rare appearances of Richard Levin<\/a>\u2019s definitive BBC1 logo. So, on an average day, there were three completely different BBC1 logos existing in parallel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One day in the life of the triune BBC1 logo.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This sort of mess would be unthinkable today. And, on the rare occassions I saw archive clips of presentation, it was clear that things used to be better. Much better.

An example of the care that the BBC used to put into their presentation were their packages for schools television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BBC Schools Television Torch Symbol<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll talk about the original package for BBC Schools television later<\/a>. It dated from 1957 and was based around a torch symbol, a clock countdown and in-vision presentation.

The subject of the rest of this post is going to be the second package from the early 1960s when the torch was retired in favour of a pie chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first saw some tantalising stills of the pie chart in an article<\/a> on the site \u201cThe Historical Television Website<\/a>\u201d in the dial-up internet days of 1998. At the time there was a mystery as to whether the pie chart segments disappeared revealing a clock or whether the pie chart cut to a mechanical clock with a second hand. And it wasn\u2019t at all clear whether the pie-chart continued to be broadcast after BBC1 switched to colour in 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, thanks to Transdiffusion<\/a>, these mysteries were cleared up and, thanks to some very kind friends, I managed to see both versions of the sequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s my recreation of the first version from the early 1960s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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