1970s
BBC North West Symbol1971
Before the introduction of the regional BBC1 globe in 1974, each of the BBC regions had a graphic symbol as their tv ident. The image shown on the left is courtesy of Francois Frappe. Francois took this black and white photo of a transmission from the Winter Hill transmitter in 1971.
The image on the right is reconstruction of the BBC North West arrow symbol ident.
1974 - 1981
BBC1 North West Closedown9.5.1980
During this era of BBC1, each region of the UK would transmit a junction between each programme, either out of vision or in vision, giving details of later programmes and the one about to be transmitted. Also, BBC1 used to close down each night and just prior to closedown the regions would transmit a late night news bulletin, play The Queen, and then remind everyone to switch their TVs off.
BBC1 North West Final Regional Invision Closedown12.9.1980
The junctions and closedown by the English regions ended on 12th September 1980 - London did all the junctions and closed down the channel at night from then on for the English regions, however Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales continued their own junctions and closedown - and here we have the final North West region transmission with John Mundy from BBC Studio P, Broadcasting House, Manchester, where the junctions and closedown came from.
Studio P was a self op. studio located on the 4th floor of BH, amongst radio studios from the 1920s, when the upper floors of the building changed from being a bank to becoming BH Manchester for the BBC's north west region's radio programmes.
Studio P had one camera, a desk in front of the presenter with various sources coming in (TK, VT, slide scanner, etc) and was about a third the size of a normal-sized living room. The presenter self-operated the cutting to the various sources and you'll see John Mundy's arms move at some point to do this. The slides also show the desk.
The clip is all pretty well self-explanatory, and the slide sequence will give a good idea of the operating conditions. The camera used to be an EMI 2001 but this was moved to Studio N eventually and a cobbled together Philips handheld camera used, with a film lens. The quality was never very good with this camera and to make matters worse there was an autocue in front of it too. That's why the camera output in this clip looks so soft and the black level sat up.
1981 - 1985
BBC 1 North West1981
The classic mirror globe from BBC North West.
Left clip - John Mundy, right clip - Stuart Hall
1985 - 1991
BBC1 North1990
BBC North West becomes BBC North, as Newcastle takes over news coverage for Cumbria.
Second clip from 1991
1991 - 1997
BBC 1 Ident1993 & 1996
and back again.. BBC North becomes BBC North West again in 1996
Left clip - BBC North / Right clip - BBC North West
1997 - 2002
BBC One North West2000
Left clip: Snowdon Ident / Right clip: English (London)
Other idents featuring North West locations were used including the Blackpool Tower Ident.
2002 - 2006
2006 - Present
BBC Two North West Idents
BBC 2 North - Copper1991 BBC 2 North - Paint
1991 BBC 2 North - Tubes
1991 BBC 2 North - Water
1991