Whilst every other 7-8 year old on the playground was swaping teenage muntant nunja turtle stickers or talking about football. I was the weird kid who consantly wanted to know why it was called ITV Schools on Channel 4 and no teacher ever being able to answer that qustion OR understanding why it even mattered.
Channel 4 have now gone full course correction from the 2015 set. To begin with, it seems like they made a point of using the revised logo everywhere BUT the idents - the revised logo was all over News, Sport and was giant in their print ads. Then, they modified all the sub-brands to include it when they introduced the Giant. As of Wednesday, they've rolled out a multi-coloured generic ident alongside new break bumpers.
Loving all your videos mate. I still remember having the piss taken out of me for pointing out how weird it was "ITV schools" was on Channel 4. It didn't make sense, but as you say, no one else cared.
Nice to see this documentary updated. Saw it on the homepage, went to a random point to see what had changed since I played it to death a few years ago, ended up watching the whole thing! Also nice to find out who designed that lovely music for the Schools Gallery in the 90s - trying to work out if that ever got released commercially...
Apparently the Channel 4 privatisation has been quietly dropped. Something I very much hope is true. Considering this plan came from someone who publicly stated that Channel 4 costs the taxpayer money (it doesn't and never has) and confuses the terms "competing with" and "getting bought out by" I am very much relieved.
@@jean-lucpicard5510 Yeah, Channel 4 is publicly owned by funded entirely by advertising. It was started in 1982 as a branch of the IBA and thus ITV ran adverts on the channel for the first ten years. Since then it's been independent from ITV, has to sell and run its own adverts but is still publicly owned. If it was privartised, it would immediately be bought out by some American multinational the same way Channel 5 was bought out by Viacom and Sky (set up by Rupert Murdoch) was eventually bought out by Comcast after 21st Century Fox's merger with Disney.
Channel 4 was a revolution when it started. Just so innovative : The Snowman, their film side, showing foreign films, US imports(like Cheers, Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, etc.), comedy(Drop the Dead Donkey, Whose Line Is It Anyway), documentaries(Equinox and Without Walls), etc.
Countdown, Brookside, Dispatches, The Comic Strip, The Tube, Right To Reply, Friday Night/Saturday Live, The Big Breakfast, Equinox, Cutting Edge, True Stories, Whose Line Is It Anyway, TFI Friday, The Crystal Maze, Father Ted, Derry Girls, Hollyoaks, Unreported World, Deal Or No Deal, Desmond’s, The IT Crowd, Peep Show, It’s A Sin, 15 to 1, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, This Is England, GBH, Absolutely, Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, Gamesmaster, Drop The Dead Donkey, The Word, Time Team. Happy 40th Channel 4
In Wales, we'd also get Brookside on S4C too. This was when S4C would transmit the shows from Channel 4 in English, as well as their own programming in Welsh.
Just like your ITV logo docs, the BSB series and almost all the stuff here, another champion programme (as we'd say up North). I ran Impossible TV wot made Motel, the sequel Ginger Forrest and a couple of animated sketch show pilots Pen Monkeys and Sex Bar. Yes, C4 were naming shows like My Massive C**k all those decades ago, I never liked the brain logo we did to replace the 3D wireframe one either. We were told in no circumstances whatsoever could we use anything sounding like the original C4 jingle. All the senior bods at C4 hated the amount of money that went to Mr Composer Man, and he had lawyers scrutinizing every new tune or jingle to make sure they weren't too similar. Motel was allegedly located in the gaps between the lines that made up the (very analogue, very SD, not even widescreen TV pictures of the time. The idea was hammered out, they asked for 13 weeks' worth and then said it had to be on air in five weeks' time. It was just before the Christmas break. I said eek, the entire staff of the company started to cry, and the commissioning editor said if we couldn't be on air by then he'd pick something that could. He was bluffing, we got some extra time (a week) and stumbled on air randomly with the kind of nonsense that we kinda kept doing for years. I won't explain the format as C4 would give us a list of timings and a schedule and we'd make bits around that - some were a whole 2 minutes long, lots 30s. Our greatest achievement were an Easter special (4Later aired Thu-Sun so perfect for that), where Bill the shoe salesman died, Nixon the (Ally McBeal) baby was implied to be Jesus, and Mr Patchioulli, who ran the place acted like God. Or it was That's My Hat!, a spoof gameshow format where a minute of footage of hats on a conveyor belt was scrupulously animated (well, 10s from a few different angles) and then at the end someone beeped in and said the catchphrase, Or 30s of Bill peeing, groaning and yodelling along. Or... well, there was lots. The sequel even premiered in prime time, linking Frasier, Friends and other proper, big, real shows. C4 were flooded with complaints at our cgi version of Posh Spice talking entierely in innuendos and failing to interview Sean Lock, her celebrity guest, on the vaguely knob-shaped sofa. And then we did teen shows, then kids, and then, in the weirdest possible turn, ended upp making many preschool series. I mean, from animated flith (as the Daily Mail called us - I was so proud) to 'charming kids' shows', a quote here which made me smile from the floor where I'd fallen in shock at seeing all this for the first time in 20+ years. So thank you for that, Mr Fish (or can I call you Bob) and if you ever want to make a documentary about the weirdities of thru-the-night animated filth, the hilariousness of which involved us pretending to recognise the cultural and arty references of the v clever C4 bosses (we did a Kurosawa spoof, and one of La Jete, before settling more for knob jokes and surreality as they were easier to do)... anyway that kinda stuff seems to slot right in with - and I use this word entirely as a tribute to our 4Later overloads Stephen and Zizi - your oeuvre
That is marvellous stuff! May I just say, the idea of yourself and Mr Fish collaborating on a video about the likes of Motel and Ginger Forrest is something that I'd dearly love to see, and, I suspect, many others.
Excellent video mate, a great rework of the older one and nice to see some "new" 80s/90s clips with improved sound and video quality to boot :) As for a new 2022 rebranding, if ever there was a time to do it surely that would be today but no doubt their plans to do that were knackered by those great party poopers in No10 :/
15:20 Why am i getting flashbacks of the Aliens dropship flying over Hadleys hope. Can it be it this inspired it, or a practical effects member who did this, worked on the Aliens movie?
For me that tapping thing was more terrifying and annoying than the blocks and Four Score. The anticipation of people sticking their fingers into the screen, the annoying sound of the tap, and as an added bonus often the smug, self-satisfied smile of the person doing the tapping (as inevitably embodied by Chris Evans)
I hate to disagree with you, but I still think those oblique tracking shot idents are genius. Ironically, the idents are among the best things about C4 these days. Ever since Big Brother it turned more into Channel 404. That barking duck tho... 😂
This is the video that Channel 4 themselves should have made. How come they didn't ask you? To paraphrase Michael French from RetroBlasting: the fans are doing the best work. And you must be a fan (Four Score and flying blocks notwithstanding, of course)
This is superb, Matthew. THANK YOU so much for doing this. I have to say I didn't like the circles at the time, buit your commentary of them has made me reappraise them. They're not bad.
How do you feel about Channel 4 unifying their channels under one brand "Channel 4", including their streaming service that people still call "4OD" despite All4 being an name since 2015?
The "Schools move to Channel 4" trailer - the TV studio appears to be a recording of Bullseye.... (Education connection: Jim Bowen was a deputy headmaster before he became a full-time comic).
Also,Central Television (the ITV West Midlands franchise) were responsible for schools playout I think prior to the move and then following the move to 4. As they also made Bullseye (from Central's Nottingham studios at the time), it's why it appeared in the trailer. Central did the playout of Schools from their Birmingham studios.
Brilliant job as always, I loved the new additions to the basis of the original 2012 video. Out of sheer curiosity, do you think you’ll ever do a re-revision of ITV In The Face?
@@BobtheFishProductions that would be neat to see, but if it was actually commissioned by them i imagine that a lot of your criticisms would maybe be neutered. at least they'd likely have cleaner archive footage
Great video. Would love to know more about the failed 1992 version though. (I think you've found out more than anyone else I have seen). I think the only ones I don't like are the coffee stains (although I liked the idea, the execution was a little odd at times), and the idents that came with the current blocks look. But I do love the tumbling blocks as a whole, I think it's fantastic and the colours really work for the channel. (I quite like the giant)
It has been nothing short of tragic to see C4 gradually become "just another channel". It still is better than ITV, but only very just. It would have been interesting to see how a possible "ITV2" that launched in 1970 or 1977 have been (which probably could have been similar to the old National Educational Television system in the US); or, for that matter, the proposed Open Broadcasting Authority (which I think would have been similar to Australia's Special Broadcasting Service).
Yeah, probably. Besides my shoe-based ignorance, I think they were conflated quite often at the time for this sort of lazy nostalgia. Big soles, popular in the 70s, must be platforms.
