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Last year it was the Doctor and his TARDIS, this year the BBC gets homely with some Christmas lights to celebrate the festive season. Meanwhile ITV1 and Five deliver some slightly less ambitious holiday idents.

- Big thanks to Craig for the videos.

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On February 19th 1985, two days before I was born, a little television programme called EastEnders first hit the airwaves in the UK. Twenty five years later and we’re both going strong. To celebrate, the BBC created this rather ambitious station ident featuring the case of the soap along with a slightly altered Albert Square.

Check out the rest (well most) of the BBC One ‘Circle’ idents here.

- Thanks for the video Craig.

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The good Doctor is having his last outing this Christmas season in his current incarnation, and the BBC have created a special BBC One ident to celebrate.

Previous BBC One Christmas idents have included giant snowballs, skating penguins and even Wallace and Gromit.

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The BBC gets festive with their programming once again this year. Check out the BBC’s take on Christmas from 2006, 2007 and 2008 as well.

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Running on-air from 1997 until 2002, the BBC One ‘Balloon’ idents where a brilliantly simple, and beautifully executed series encompassing all four nations of the United Kingdom with the use of one enormous hot air balloon.

England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are each represented in the above compiles, with the balloon flying over such locations as the London Docklands, Eilean Donan Castle, Cardiff, and Snowdonia National Park.

The ‘Balloon’ idents were replaced by the ‘Rythm and Movement’ series in 2002, and eventually by the current ‘Circle’ collection in 2006.

After the jump is the ‘National Anthem’ edition of the ident, played at closing time on BBC One for a brief time in 1997.

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Wallace and Gromit are the stars of the BBC’s festive look this year, with the claymation duo featuring in their very own ident.

Sticking to the ‘circle’ theme, the Aardman creations are a slightly different take on the usual Christmas branding for BBC One which has previously featured ice skating penguins, and giant balls of snow.

And what would December be without some Christmas specials, including among other things the return of Gavin & Stacey, featured in the two trailers after the jump.

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- Big thanks to Andy for the videos.

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Ninety second promo for the BBC’s latest batch of new drama. Featuring the likes of Survivors, Little Dorrit, Spooks, Einstein and Eddington, Consuming Passion, Apparitions, Wallander and In Love with Barbara.

All set to the Elbow’s tune “One Day Like This”.

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I like to consider the old BBC One idents as the reason I started this site. And while this new set that launched in 2006 doesn’t grab me in the same way, they’re still some of the best television branding going around.

These three new additions stay true to the formula, with the spectacular ‘Helicopter’ spot being introduced on new years day this year, and the other two going to air for the first time just days ago in late August.

Check out the rest of the current set of BBC One idents here.

- Thanks to the combined efforts of Andy and Andrew for the videos.

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UPDATE: Added the “making of” video above.

While the ABC is still busy getting its Playback service off the ground, the BBC’s iPlayer is already a huge success with over 17 million downloads and streams since its Christmas day launch.

To celebrate April Fools Day and further promote the iPlayer platform the BBC produced this very funny and creative promotion that ran yesterday across BBC television, and generated the kind of 1st of April newspaper stories we’ve all come to expect, with the Mirror reporting: First-ever images of the world’s only flying penguins.

The Guardian has reported that the spot was likely well worth the money for the coverage it received, and while the BBC is certainly raising the bar on the digital future, I can’t wait to see what the ABC delivers.

- Thanks to Craig for the video.

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One year ago today I posted the BBC One Christmas ident for 2006, and in the spirit of consistency I give you this years Christmas ident, this time featuring the skating prowess of some penguins. Check out the rest of the BBC One idents right here.

And even though I’ve never watched an episode of Dr Who, the trailer for this years Christmas special looks pretty cool, and it goes with my whole previously stated appreciation of original programming during the holidays.

- Thanks for the videos Andy and Craig.

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This time last year I posted BBC One’s Christmas promotion for their upcoming holiday programming, went off on a little tangent about the non ratings period, and romanticised the idea of actually sitting around the television with your family. I’ll spare you from hearing about the last two again, and instead just post this years BBC One Christmas promo.

The music is ‘Let Me Entertain You’ from the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy.

UPDATE: Another BBC One Christmas promo (second video), this time featuring ‘Make Someone Happy’ by Jimmy Durante. This time predominantly featuring the upcoming comedy on BBC One over the Christmas season.

- Thanks Andy for the second video, and thanks anonymous internet for the first.

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The suburbs of Britain, and the well dressed women who mow its lawns are the focus of the latest ident release from BBC One. See the rest from this series right here.

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A rabbit, a forest and some fairies round out the 11th addition to the new ‘circle’ idents for BBC One.

See the whole collection here, or to see the Northern Ireland variant keep reading..

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- Thanks to Craig and Ian for the videos.

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BBC One launched two new idents over the weekend. This is the first of them, with a space exploration theme, the standard remains very high, and while they’re probably not my favourite you can’t deny the quality of production.

View all of the new BBC One idents here.

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If you live in the UK, your lucky enough to be waking up to BBC Radio 1′s Big Weekend, the largest free ticketed event in Europe, and if your waking up in Preston, you’re even luckier because your probably going to it.

Featuring a huge line up of acts including but not limited to; Bloc Party, Maximo Park, Razorlight (the first video features this song), Scissor Sisters (second video) and Kaiser Chiefs, the closest free event we would have to this in Australia would be Triple J’s One Night Stand.

Almost as impressive as the acts themselves though is the BBC’s coverage of the event, which spans not only Radio 1, but also nightly highlights on BBC Three and live coverage of the whole thing on the red button’s BBCi. The UK really seems to have embraced the promise of digital television, hopefully Australia will too.. eventually.

And, seeing as its a radio event, here’s some audio…

Radio promo: [mp3]http://beohm.com/radio/BBCbigweekendpromo1.mp3[/mp3]

First 2 minutes of the event from Radio 1: [mp3]http://beohm.com/radio/BBCbigweekendlaunch.mp3[/mp3]

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While I’ve gushed over these BBC One ‘Rhythm & Movement’ idents before, and posted the Little Britain variants, I’ve just realised I didn’t have a big post to show off the whole collection, so here it is. (I think all I’m missing is “haka” and any regional ones).

Like I’ve said before these are pretty much the reason I started the blog, and while I’m not sure I’m as excited about them as I once was, they certainly represent something I’m becoming pretty passionate about… I’m just trying to figure out exactly what that is.

Below the fold are the French and Saunders parodies, along with the “One Last Dance” video that gave the idents their final outing before they changed in October last year.

So keep reading…

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Above is the farewell to the idents, that played late the night before they switched, and below are the two French and Saunders parodies.

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We’ve got Red Nose Day in Australia, and we even have some form of Comic Relief, but I’m absolutely struck with the intensity in which the whole campaign seems to over take the United Kingdom. This year alone they’ve raised over £40,000,000 and still taking your donations.

Among all the other TV specials they ran to motivate you to donate, the one that caught my eye was Top Gear of the Pops, which combined the now canned formats of Top of the Pops with everyones favourite car show Top Gear, all in the name of charity.. aww.

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More of Dead Ringers’ take on the idents of the United Kingdom. The first video is actually Dead Ringers own creation of a BBC One ident, and not just a voice over like usual (I tried to think of some BBC One/Number 2 joke but you get the idea).

Check out last weeks here.

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Not content with just mocking the idents, Dead Ringers went a step further and deconstructed the new BBC Two idents as part of special investigation parodying the current affairs show Panorama.

The Chaser also took a jab at the new ABC idents here.

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As I’ve mentioned before it was literally an episode of Dead Ringers that first introduced me to the BBC One idents, so its probably that hilarious show I have to thank for even starting this site.

Series seven of the show started last week in the UK, and above is the parodied idents from the first episode.

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The BBC has not wavered from their 70′s theme when its comes to the promotion of the I’ve-heard-its-quite-good Life on Mars which started its second and final season last night in the UK.

While the beeb recently relaunched its BBC One idents, they took the ingenious step of having you “tune in” to the BBC of the 1970′s, idents and all, for their broadcast of last nights episode. Check out some of the other promos for Life on Mars here.

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This is really pretty smart. Life on Mars, a show about a modern day policeman who gets hit by a car and wakes up in the year 1973 being promoted as if the show was being broadcast on the BBC of the 1970′s.

Its really well done, and the theme continues on their other marketing exercises. Graham snapped the below photo from a bus shelter in London promoting the series return. Keep reading for the photo….

Click to enlarge.

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BBC News relaunched its on screen look in January across all their news services, including the News, News 24 and BBC World for those of us living outside the UK. For some of the reasons behind the change the head of news at BBC World blogged about it here.

For some comparision, video of BBC News from May 2006 can be found here.

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Never has a song I voted for in Triple J’s hottest 100 come in at number one. The highest was number four. So you can imagine my excitement when Friday morning last week, listening to a stream of the countdown from Paris I heard that the phenomenal One Crowded Hour by Augie March took out the top position in the most voted public song poll in the world. Enjoy!

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For some reason my earlier posting of this video disappeared from the blog.. anyway, its the latest BBC One Christmas ident, and like I said before the post vanished, its not as loud as last years, but still fits the circle theme pretty well.

To download the rest of the new BBC One idents click here.

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I hate non ratings periods, they don’t make sense, if I didn’t download all my television I’d probably appreciate the fact that Nip/Tuck was finally returning to Australian television, but apart from that it doesn’t make sense, its not like we stop watching television!

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that I love the British tradition of Christmas specials, I first realised it happened when I got into The Office. Its almost like a present from the BBC to enjoy over the break, I can even picture families watching television together.. and all that crap.

This promo from BBC One is a big coming soon to all this years Christmas specials including Little Britain Abroad, The Vicar of Dibley, My Family and The Green Green Grass.

The music is ‘Zat You, Santa Claus?’ by Louis Armstrong.

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The BBC launched a new corporate campaign in March this year with tagline ‘This is what we do’. Each video is designed to demonstrate “the passion and commitment of individuals working for the organisation”.

This is the first campaign of its kind since the 1997 Perfect Day promotion which I’ve been told was quite revered when it was first released.

I don’t think this is all of them, and I’m not sure if they are still running, let me know.

Update: Two more, ‘Every minute’ and ‘The Favours’. Thanks Graham.

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The second part of the BBC documentary series Planet Earth goes to air later today (UK time) and since I’ve already shown you the earlier BBC and ABC promos for the show it seems only fair you see the new promo (still featuring “Hoppípolla” by Sigur Rós) from the recently refreshed BBC One.

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The full set of the new BBC One circle idents (for now). New idents as they’re broadcast will be added to this post.

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The night before BBC One switched over to the new idents they played this montage of the “symbols which have defined BBC One for the last four and half years”. It features 14 of the idents from the Rhythm and Movement series.

I can’t imagine any network in Australia ever farewelling an on screen package like this, but it was very well done.