ARCHIVE: Dave Baldwin, The TV Room
YouTube and websites make it possible for Pres fans to spot things they never noticed at the time.
Trivial changes, minor modifications, perhaps even the correction of small errors.
Look very carefully at the BBC One network clock in the first few weeks after the February 1985 revamp.
Then look at the clock again a few months later.
RELATED ARTICLE: BBC One continuity: COW era clock first airing (18th February 1985).
RELATED ARTICLE: BBC One closedown (1985).
RELATED ARTICLE: BBC One closedown (1985).
The clockface has moved ever so slightly up the screen, widening the gap between the clock itself and the golden “BBC 1” logo.
Personally I think the modified version looks more pleasing aesthetically, although perhaps I am only saying that because it’s the version I remember more clearly.
But this is intriguing.
There is no obvious advantage in the change – there is nothing actually wrong with the original version, nor did the modification make any obvious difference a viewer would notice.
The only possible advantage was at closedown. The changes meant the clock was centred at exactly the same point as the globe so the transition seemed just a little smoother.
But it hardly seems worth going to the effort of adjusting the clock to do that.
Of course, it isn’t uncommon to make little tweaks in the weeks and months following a revamp. People may identify small operational problems or get positive ideas for changes once they see a design package in action.
But I’m not convinced this is the explanation on this occasion.
The clocks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were all in the correct position.
Network and Northern Ireland modified the equipment which was already used to generate the clock electronically – Scotland and Wales used mechanical models up until the February 1985 relaunch.
Clearly somebody was hard at work on the night of the relaunch. The network clock was modified at some point after the 6pm junction so the blue and gold version could debut before the Nine o’Clock News.
(BBC Northern Ireland was without a clock for a few days until the equipment was modified.)
I have speculated before about the “correct” design for the 1985 clock.
Should there have been an empty centre, as on network and BBC One Northern Ireland? Or were Scotland and Wales right to have a blue centre dot?
I can’t help but think that if the network design was “wrong” it would have been corrected when the position of the face was shifted?
It’s all a very intriguing – albeit trivial and pointless – mystery from a long time ago.
But it is a reminder that when idents and clocks were generated from bespoke equipment, revamps were complex logistical processes as well as creative exercises.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: BBC One clock (1985). COPYRIGHT: BBC.
I always thought it should’ve had a dot in the middle. Like you say, more aesthetically pleasing, and it irritates me a little that nobody corrected it everywhere else.