Size Matters - BBC Considers Enlarging Credits

When the BBC introduced a new style of end credits for its TV programs last year, the intention was to enable a new style of “end credit promotion” (or ECP) to be used wherever possible, but the end result turned out to have its own disadvantages and can often seem out of place in real world usage.

New program producer guidelines were issued which consigned program credits to the center of the screen, and they could only scroll vertically as well. Although technically speaking these rules are only guidelines, nearly all new programs are expected to follow these guidelines as a matter of course.

This corporate style enables other BBC programs and channels to be promoted whilst the end credits are still rolling, and with more viewers switching channels whilst a program’s end credits are being shown, an ECP is considered to be a means of preventing viewers from straying to non-BBC channels.

However the recently-introduced corporate ECP style packs a lot of visual information onto the screen at one time, and this results in the end credits being demoted to a small rectangular-shaped area almost as a corporate afterthought, with what’s coming up later in the evening given a much larger display area.

The shrunken credit information may be readable on a 42″ TV screen but the information may be totally illegible on a small screen, and the credits may still be hard to read for some people even if the corporate guidelines were followed to the letter.

But are end credits still important? It’s true that the internet now provides an easy means of storing information on actors, producers and technicians, etc., but retrieving this information for certain programes without specific references can be surprisingly difficult if not impossible.

Then there’s the glory factor; notably having name(s) of individual(s) directly associated with what you’ve just seen, as well as having a ‘period of contemplation’ between the end of an emotional drama series and bringing viewers back to earth with what’s coming up next - essentially the dynamics of good television.

Other potential objections include having too much promotional information on-screen simultaneously leading to information overload, a lack of permissible creativity for program endings as well as the potential for mistakes which can (and do) happen despite the best intentions.

As well as the above reasons there’s the simple observation that the end credit promotions usually look too ‘busy’ as well as sometimes being rather pointless in their execution; it can spoil the general presentational feel of a TV channel which may otherwise be clean and uncluttered.

The BBC’s end credit promotions seem to have all the hallmarks of having been designed by committee, with the end result being a corporate box-ticking exercise for the marketing department as opposed to a creative endeavor by the program producers, resulting in the program’s credits taking a back seat.

And the complaints surrounding the demotion of that once-important end credit sequence to a small rectangle still illustrate the importance that end credits hold in British broadcasting, and despite these credits being ignored on most occasions they can become vitally important when they are actually needed.

Ironically the end credits are still relatively important for other broadcasters, hence the credits are still given reasonably prominent attention despite the promotional pressures that broadcasters may face. By contrast, the credits for children’s TV programs on CBBC and CBeebies are often totally unreadable.

Public service broadcasters such as the BBC are meant to serve the entire population, not just a middle-class, channel-hopping, Sky+ loving subset, and the BBC becoming a slave to its marketing department has shown how recent priorities have shifted towards the broadcaster from the viewer.

But the BBC has recently learned the hard way that it has to please more than just its marketers, and with external criticism threatening to engulf its privileged position the BBC is starting to realize that its viewers need to be listened to, even on issues traditionally thought to be unimpeachable.

Posted by Southern Star

Source transdiffusion.org

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