The worst I’ve seen was related to a contest. Right in the middle of a show, up comes a flurry of large dollar bills fluttering down across the entire screen, covering damn near everything up. As they disappear, the secret Trek word of the day appears in huge letters: “SEVEN OF NINE”. Be the seventeenth caller and blah blah blah…
Another reason bugs came about, on top of channel proliferation, is that TV’s no longer have a display that shows what channel they are tuned to. In the old days, there was a lighted dial. When remotes became popular, there was an LED number. Now all the televisions put the number on screen when you change channels (or push some button that brings it up), but the channel is no longer displayed at all times. So, the bug becomes useful.
Unfortunately, it also gets in the way.
On my TV, I can hit the ‘info’ button on my remote once to see the time and channel, but if I hit it a second time, I’ll get readout that sometimes tells me the title of the show I’m watching. I assume that some shows broadcast this and others don’t bother.
For years, I’ve been hoping for a new standard to appear in television, which would transmit the bug and the other information in a separate data stream. TV’s would be built with a small second screen to display this stuff. That way, you could have more info available, but none of it would be on top of your picture. Of course, it would make the receiver more expensive, but the new HD digital sets are so dear that the increase might be hardly noticed.
This point has been addressed, but being in television, I have to tell you that you cannot overestimate the stupidity of the viewing public. We receive many, many viewer complaints about programming we do not air. We frequently are read the riot act over despicable programming that has no place on public television. That’s often because it’s not on public television.
PBS was already alarmed the growth of cable back in the 1980s when I began working here. Look at many of the niche channels out there now – many you can trace to programming originally aired on public broadcasting. “This Old House” is THE original how-to program. Now we have HGTV, the Food Channel, the Travel Channel and lord knows how many others devoted to what in years past was ptv fare. One of the first was A&E. However, we are very mindful that we are a service that is NOT only available to cable subscribers. Here in a rural state, there are areas not served by cable. (Direct TV is another thing all together. Don’t ask me anything about it. I’ve understood that local the PBS channel is not availabe if you have a dish. People with dishes here watch Pittsburg, for example, which is provided by their dish services.)
I suppose the point is obvious that bugs are essential if the viewer is going identify favorite programming with a particular channel. We have an additional burden of making the case that viewer loyalty should translate into dollars pledged to our support.
(Disclaimer: I’m a lowly writer in our production division; I have nothing whatsoever to do with marketing, fundraising or promotion, so my perceptions may not be completely accurate. How’s that for hedging.)
I remember reading about how it took like over a year of effort on the fans’ part to get Comedy Central to do something about their logo, which covered-up most of Crow on MST3K. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing CC did to the show.
Later when MST3K was on Sci-Fi, fans made a mild complaint that their smallish logo interfered with Crow, and Sci-Fi moved it to the other side of the screen within a matter of weeks! And they only did this for this speciffic show. Even when their logo became smaller and VERY transparent, they still moved to the other side of the screen for MST3K.
A few things about “bugs” I wanted to mention: Comedy Central is probably the channel I watch most often, so I’ve seen its bug more than probably any other. I seem to recall that, when they first started putting a logo on the screen, they experimented a bit. One year, in January, they tried one that was basically a thin diagonal ribbon across the bottom right corner, completely opaque. That one didn’t last long.
I don’t mind most bugs, honestly, but there are some things about some of them that bother me. NBC’s is a prime example of one that irritates me. Okay, NBC, you carry the Olympics. We understand that you were proud of carrying the Sidney games in 2000, and it’s cool that you’re proud of covering the upcoming Salt Lake City games in 2002 (assuming you are). But, christ, it’s 2001! Why keep the Olympic rings below the peacock in your bug for a whole year when nothing Olympic is happening? Do you think we’ll forget?
Some networks do fun stuff with the bugs occasionally. I remember when “Herman’s Head” was still on Fox (shortly after they started using the bug), the characters, at the end of one show, attacked the bug with window cleaner, saying “I thought I was the only one who saw it!” VH1’s old bug was kinda fun too, because they would turn the V upside-down during the Christmas season, turning it into a little tree.
I have one question about these bugs: are they turned on and off manually? It seems to me that, quite a lot, mistakes are made; the bug stays on the screen for a while after the network goes to commercial, then gets turned off, as if they forgot. So, is it some lowly intern’s job to sit there and push a button to make the bug appear and disappear with every commercial break?
I figure it’s only a matter of time before the networks start selling the other three corners to corporate sponsors for them to display their logos as well.
On one opening of the Simpsons, there was a fake Fox logo in the corner. The characters ripped the logo off of the screen, threw it on the floor, and trampled it. I can see how program creators might really hate these things. I wonder if directors are already setting up shots with the logo in mind, making sure there’s nothing that will be covered up.
Please don’t give them any ideas. 
Did anyone else see the skit on SNL where it was a news show and icons and tickers and whatnot kept being added to the screen so that the news anchors couldn’t be seen?
I think I am getting used to some of them, but in general, they bother me!
Another thing that will make bugs more prominant is the proliferation of TIVO and other such PVR devices.
“What channel does Star Trek come on?”
“Who cares, just enter ‘Star Trek’ it into the PVR and it will record it whenever and wherever it comes on.”
When you start creating your own lineup, you stop associating a show with a particular channel, which makes TV stations cringe. How can I sell advertisement or subscriptions if nobody knows they are watching my channel?
Just a couple of weeks ago, the WB was playing with the option of popping up banners advertising shows during other shows. A few seconds after commercial break, a big banner, obscuring a quarter of the screen, would pop up. “You’re watching Angel on WB”, it would say. With a picture of Angel on it, in case we missed the fact that he was actually visible on the screen until the banner popped up. For thirty seconds or so. Then it would be gone, and we would be safe to continue watching.
Until about three minutes later, when a banner saying “Watch Smallville on whatever night it’s on!” pops up, complete with teenage Superman head. For another thirty seconds. Then it would be gone, and the audience would heave a sigh of relief, and go back to watching the show, realizing that nothing they could see there would match the horror of the banners.
I haven’t seen them since, so hopefully they’re just some ill-fated marketing experiment gone horribly awry. One can only hope…
I laugh at the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TNN when the end credits are unreadable because they absolutely must tell you that this is, in fact, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Thanks for clarifying.
Anyway, so we now know that the majority of rational people HATE the bug, so why are they there? Does it have to take up more than 2/3 of the screen before we start complaining to the networks? I don’t mind a “ghosted” logo of a certain size in the corner (TNN’s old one), but no banners or opaque logos should be legally permitted. I would think that banners displaying show names and ads would interfere with local severe weather warnings. Or, people are so used to ignoring the scrolling banners that they don’t notice severe weather warnings (yes, people can be that numb to it).
FTR, I’ve seen things on the side of the road that look better than TNN’s new logo.
Branding. Networks and TV stations use bugs because they can, and they are under the impression that the more they thwack you over the head with their brand name, the more likely you’ll be to remember what channel you’re watching.
It works, and the trend is away from transparent or “crystal” bugs and toward opaque, animated bugs. MSNBC popularized the opaque bug, IIRC. Anyone notice the slowly spinning bug on Fox News? That’s the future, God help us.
Another TV term to learn: sniping. That’s the name they’ve given to the new practice of promoting future programs (and reminding you what you’re currently watching) at the bottom of the screen, DURING THE PROGRAM. It’s not enough to simply have a peacock up throughout West Wing; now, they also have to promote the 2-hour Ripped-From-The-Headlines Law and Order next week. That’s a snipe. Learn to love it; it’s here to stay.
You wanna know why your local TV station does the idiotic things it does, I’m your guy…
I’ve gotten used to the bugs in the corners, and even the giant LIVE boxes the news networks put in the other corners.But using the network logo as a spacer or period between messages on the crawls should count as subliminal advertising.And lately, the crawls could be renamed “propaganda tickers” for all the incomplete, inaccurate, and out of date information they contain. When I try to watch Fox News Channel I feel like I’m watching the propaganda films from “Starship Troopers.”
As for Headline News, I think the brilliant minds behind the format change got jealous of Bloomberg Information Television. But instead of financial info, they just run fluffy pseudo-news and ads for other AOL Time Warner shows.
Branding indeed…
You should all be glad I don’t work in advertising. I’ve got a whole lot more ideas like that. How about ticker tapes running across the top and bottom of the screen with advertising slogans in them, or showing everything in widescreen letterbox format and running ads in the blank space above and below, or shrinking down the screen image and running ads in the margins, or…
Last year I wrote a short story called The Unblinking Eye, in which the CBS logo had become a god, and every New Year’s people flocked to Times Square to see six sacrificial victims crushed under the Orb. The Voice of God was actually a man named Cebius, who lived in a tower and commanded the people through a microphone. There was an attempt to overthrow him by the Prophetess of the Peacock, but things didn’t really end well for anyone in the story.