UKTV DTT
~ UK History/UK Bright Ideas~
These two channels stem from the huge UKTV Network, the collection of channels such as UK Gold, jointly owned by the BBC and Flextech(Telewest's programming division). They are the only UKTV ones on Freeview at present (with the others appearing on pay platforms). UK History launched at the same time as Freeview, on the 30th October, although it features on all Digital platforms. The channel is designed to carry (would you believe) Historical based programming. UK Bright Ideas launched in January 2003, designed to 'bring the best of UK Food and UK Style'. If a 2 hour loop, which is only on air 6 hours a day represents the 'best of', they really have problems. Whereas UKBI may not be a brilliant channel, both it and UK History still have some decent presentation. In 2004, both channels were renamed to UKTV History and UKTV BrightIdeas as part of a *cough* huge rebranding exercise for the UKTV network. The channel presentation was ammended only slightly to reflect this.
UK History
UK History Promo
A long looped advert for the new BBC/Flextech channel UK History. This was broadcast on Freeview in the run up to the launch of both the 'Freeview' service and the channel itself throughout October 2002. A mammoth filesize, due to its length.
6.30mb
UK History - Ident
Personally I find UK History's ident quite impressive. A giant CGI Book with historical imagery appearing on the pages, combines nicely with the sound. These idents are a nightmare to encode to video files though!
UK History - Promo
An example of a UK History promo. This shows one of the channel's 'theme weeks'. They seem to be very fond of theme weeks, having them nearly all the time... almost like DFS and their 'Exclusive Sale' weeks.
UK History - Menu
UK History often has a programme menu like this before advert breaks. It uses the 'book' theme, just like the idents. I always think its nice to see a small channel like UK History managing to keep up this amount of continuity (even if it is all pre-recorded). Didn't ITV used to be like that?
UKTV History Ident - 2005
An updated ident for UK History, now mentioning its new name of UKTV History.
UK Bright Ideas
UK Bright Ideas - Food Ident
A nice jolly tune accompanies the UK Bright Ideas ident. Each of the UK Bright Ideas idents features a colour, and lighting, and they are grouped around the 4 main programming strands on the channel. This version, set in a kitchen, is used before cookery programming. The main problem as far as I can see with the ident is that the white channel name at the bottom of the screen is difficult to read most of the time, what with all the lights used in the background.
UK Bright Ideas - Garden Ident
A green setting and green lights make up the Gardening ident.
UK Bright Ideas - Home Ident
Everything has a warm yellowy glow for the Home ident.
UK Bright Ideas - Promo
An advert for one of the programmes on UK Bright Ideas, showing us UKBI's trailer style.
UKTV Bright Ideas (Gardens) - 2005
An updated version of the gardening ident to feature the updated UKTV Bright Ideas name. Complete with an announcement where we're very helpfully reminded UKTV Bright Ideas is part of the UKTV network... just in case we forgot!
~ Acknowledgements ~