DOG tags, what a load of symbolics.
By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in Uncategorized on March 23, 2007 at 12:04 pm
DOG tags are digital on-screen graphics, those little symbols which are always on-screen for digital TV channels. Why are they there? They serve no useful purpose, are intensely annoying and at times ruin the program underneath. They have even been blamed for damaging plasma screens.
Channel 5 were the first to use them on terrestrial TV in the UK. In 1997 they put a very bright one on screen, then toned it down a little after complaints from viewers, before removing it completely when they rebranded to “5″.
BBC Responds
The BBC have them on all their digital channels, particularly large and intrusive logos which don’t even move to the edge during wide screen broadcasts but stay at the old 14:9 position. Paul Wheeler at BBC Information told me: “The BBC has adopted a policy of inserting Channel Identifiers in the top left-hand corner of the screen on its dedicated digital channels. This is because it was felt important to ensure that viewers could quickly identify they were watching BBC services. As the number of channels grows, this branding aspect is likely to become increasingly significant. ”
In other words, we might mistake Top Gear for the Teletubbies so we need a logo to help us. Come to think of it, Clarkson does look a bit like Laa-Laa.
Wheeler is right about an increase but not in significance, just more on-screen rubbish we don’t want or need. Now it is telling us to press the red button or advertising the next program. It would be acceptable if it were to announce an item of national significance that couldn’t wait until the next break in the program – nuclear war, the death of the Royal family or something like that. Digital TV has so many other sources of information, many hardwired into the sets themselves, we don’t need the constant nagging inflicted on us by the BBC, et al.
Wheeler continues: “I appreciate that you may continue to disagree with the use of these graphics, rest assured that your views have been registered on our daily log which is made available to programme makers and BBC management in order to improve the quality of our service.”
And that’s another load of manure because this campaign has been running since 2000 to get rid of the logos and broadcasters refuse to listen. They reply with formula letters and hackneyed responses.
So what?
What does this have to do with ITPro? It’s all about branding and that is the next big thing to hit our desktops. Apple is there already, in a tastefully discrete way, of course – for example the Apple logo that appears in the iTunes Visualizer just when you’ve relaxed into chilled, spaced-out fuzziness. Mac OS X and Vista are capable of fancy, layered and transparent effects so it seems inevitable they will be used. Especially as firms like Google and Adobe are offering web-based software which will have to be paid for in some way or the other.
I hope some clever hacker writes something to turn them all off again.
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