T1 - Understanding the purpose of television idents and the opportunities they present

Identifying the Channel

The first Ident was seen on the BBC in 1953 with the development of more than one channel,
audiences needed to know what channel they were on. The BBC ident was nicknamed "Bat's Wings" due to its look. Over time the idents have improved with newer technologies and the circular format for the BBC indent was introduced in 1962, showing a map of Britain split into the regions they broadcast in, inside a circle. After this the famous "Globe" ident was introduced in 1963.






Organising the Schedule

Idents can be used to organise a channel's program schedule by informing the audience what is on the channel at what time and to potentially entice the viewer to stay and continue watching instead of changing channels, for example with this ident from BBC Parliament.



Segmentation of the scheduling

Non commercial channels such as the BBC do not have time to show ads programs and use indents for a multitude of reasons;
      -To provide information about the channel/programmes
      -To promote other programmes on the channel
      -To regulate the channels schedule/fill time between programmes
      -To provide a break for studio workers such as on news or sport programmes

Creating the right tone and appealing to the target audience

Indents can be used to advertise what sort of channel it is, which is vitally important for a channel to have, appealing to the right target audience. This was done well by BBC4, initially, to show off a more factual and intellectual channel


Creating a brand and encouraging brand loyalty

Building a 'brand' for a channel is vitally important to its success, idents help to endorse a channel logo or name so the audience recognise it instantly, like the E4 ident is easily recognisable from its almost surreal setting. And encourages loyalty to the channel.


Creating corporate identity

Channels are no longer limited to one country, and as a result idents have become increasingly helpful to create channel brands in other countries. These create a corporate identity that can be sold worldwide and diluted to be used across multiple platforms, e.g. Online, TV, etc. providing a constant theme across platforms.

Packaging and Re-packaging a series of programmes or event

Idents have been used to identify that a particular program belongs to that channel, for instance 'Dave' has an ident for Storage Hunters. This was also done by BBC3 when they had coverage of the olympics.