Even in the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation employs logo jokes on its TV shows.
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News
- The BBC gave the shutdown of some of its analogue television signals a final farewell with retro idents before they faded out to the pages of telly history:
- BBC One Wales closed
with the mirror globe ident slowly shrinking into nothingness. - BBC Two Northern Ireland played the 1979-1986 BBC Two ident and then played it backwards to black as the announcer closes off.
- BBC One Northern Ireland, the final channel in the entire United Kingdom to close its analogue signals, went out with a sequence that begins with the 1981 mirrored globe ident. It fades to the unprocessed image shown on a monitor where Digit Al (the country's digital switchover Public Service Announcement mascot) sits in a studio set, showing other idents of BBC One past and a memorial for Ceefax (which also died with analogue TV). With the country henceforth unified in the transition to digital TV, the announcer gets to deliver the very last words spoken on UK analogue television:
Analogue television has seen many technological advances and additions, since the days of Baird and Marconi. From 405-line black-and-white to 625-line color, the introduction of Ceefax, the world's first teletext system, and NICAM Stereo to name just a few. The move to digital television will allow technology to advance still further, providing even more services. And so from tomorrow morning, BBC One Northern Ireland will be available in high definition on Freeview, satellite and cable. Now though, we enter a new era of broadcasting as this becomes a fully digital UK. From the analogue BBC television service: Good night... and goodbye. - BBC One Wales closed
- On 29 March 1985, BBC1's Computer Originated World ('COW') stopped turning to mark the start of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
- During the '70s and '80s, BBC One came out with special logos to mark Christmas, most of which employed a version of the signature BBC Globe.
- For 1978, someone at Television Centre had the idea to replace the globe with... this. Nightmare Fuel doesn't even begin to cover it.
- For 1989, the COW globe was turned into a spinning top at the foot of a Christmas tree.
- For 1990, the COW globe was superimposed on the cover of a magic book.
- For 1978, someone at Television Centre had the idea to replace the globe with... this
- For a Halloween event on BBC Two in 1992, the iconic "Paint" ident was modified so that instead of viridian paint, blood would splash on the 2, which was then cut in half by a chainsaw. Other Halloween variants (as seen in the linked video) included the 2 getting electrocuted by jumper cables, and getting stabbed while under a cloth and bleeding out, in a homage to Psycho.
- In 2015, BBC Two opened a comedy program with their familiar "Silk" ident... only for the tarp to be pulled off, revealing a bespectacled man in nothing but his underwear lying down in the shape of a number 2.
- The animated "2" idents turned out to have great potential for "theme night" special editions, including a Doctor Who night in which the 2 appeared as a Dalek (later used for a Doctor Who repeat season), and a Red Dwarf night in which successive idents showed the 2 and a Scutter meeting, falling in love, getting married and having babies.
- A special logo was released in 2022 to commemorate the centennial of the BBC, seen here. note
- On the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022, a special BBC logo was broadcast in royal purple to commemmorate the event, seen here.
Radio
- In the audio series Doctor Who: Redacted, at the beginning of episode 1, the BBC Sounds jingle starts playing as normal, but becomes distorted partway through and is interrupted by the Doctor trying to send a message.
- Episode 2 of Kat Sadler's Screen Time features a parody of the BBC Sounds jingle where after the usual sentence, the voice adds a warning to not listen to episode 1 of Kat's podcast.
- In the final episode of the audio series The Sink, the BBC Sounds jingle plays as normal and following that we hear the narrator talking. The narrator then makes a comment about going back to the beginning which prompts the BBC Sounds app to play again.
TV Shows
- Doctor Who:
- On The Five Doctors 1995 VHS release, the '90s BBC Video logo gets sucked up by the Time Scoop. This variation was featured on the 25th Anniversary Edition DVD release of the story as an Easter Egg.
- The Bells of Saint John opens with a BBC One ident being corrupted by static and weird symbols showing up below the logo. The signals and symbols are very plot-relevant.
- The TV broadcasting of The Day of the Doctor was preceded by the Doctor disrupting an ident: "The Moment is here..."
- Most of Series 8 and 9 had idents identical to the usual ones of the time, but with (for the biker ident) the Doctor briefly cutting in, and a Dalek being in the crowd firing off lasers, or (for the hippo ident) the shadow of the TARDIS flying over the water.
- The Doctor Falls started with an ident that a Cyberman hijacks from the announcer, declaring "time is running out for the Doctor." The BBC's famous Test Card F also makes a split-second cameo when the Cyberman barges in, as a tip of the hat to the episode's premiere date (July 1st, 2017) also being the 50th anniversary of the first color TV broadcast in all of Europe on BBC Two next door, which that channel honored by digging out their first color ident for the milestone day.
- "The Dæmons" had a "temporary fault" apology caption for "Devil's End"◊ on a fictitious BBC 3. (This was long before there was a real BBC Three.)
- The Goodies episode "Earthanasia" (in which the world gets blown up by agreement of its governments) ends with the 'spinning globe' ident... which too gets blown up.
- Each episode of the anthology audio series Murmurs features the jingle for the BBC Sounds app, only for the jingle to distort partway through.
- Life on Mars: The series 2 premiere opened with a CGI recreation of the mirror-globe ident used at the time.
- BBC Wales went one step further on the Series 2 premiere, using their actual model, complete with bilingual Cymru/Wales branding, and an original BBC Wales announcer.
- BBC One Promos were done in a Retraux style based on the network's presentation in the early '70s (the show's setting).
- Promos for the American version of the series featured a 1970s ABC logo and an Ernie Anderson soundalike.
- BBC Wales went one step further on the Series 2 premiere, using their actual model,
- Monty Python's Flying Circus played a lot with the BBC bumper logo, adding silly narration to it, such as "We interrupt this program to annoy you, and to be generally bothersome." It even did this after the closing credits of the show, to maximize audience confusion.
- Roland Rat: The Series: In keeping with the previously established conceit that Roland had been lured to the BBC by being offered his own channel, each episode opened with a BBC Three Continuity Announcement, featuring a version of the then-current BBC Two "TWO" logo that, of course, said "THREE" (as with the Doctor Who example above, this was before there was a real BBC Three). This was despite the fact the show aired on BBC One.
- Ben Elton started every episode of his 1998 comedy series with a parody of the BBC One balloon ident.
