I’m a bit behind here, but I was just catching up on some newsgroups[1] when I saw someone mention Charlie Brooker’s Guardian column from a couple of weeks ago. In it he points to the BBC’s latest guideline for the production of programme credits. Basically they are laying down a far stricter set of guidelines than ever before because they are going to start mangling end credits in far worse ways than they ever have before. It’s going to become common that end credits are squeezed to a tiny rectangle so that the rest of the screen can be used for marketing messages. For example the font used need to be large enough that they can be read when the image is reduced to less than half of the usual size.
Brooker sums up his (and my) objections nicely:
That’s it, at a stroke. No more enjoying the Doctor Who theme tune. No more ‘”You Have Been Watching”. No more dramatic coda following the final credit. No more Pythonesque fun-with-mock-continuity. None of that. Instead, shows must slide into and over each other, turning the schedule into one big TV megamix; meaningless imagery gushing from a tap. Because they’re terrified you might exhibit free will and turn over.
As ever, it’s all the fault of people with charts and computers and expensive shirts and frail imaginations, of course; people who delight in proving beyond all doubt that old-fashioned credit sequences caused viewers to start flipping. And you can’t argue with their figures, because numerically they’re right. But aesthetically they’re wrong. And aesthetics matter in a way that can’t be detected in Microsoft Excel.
Slowly, surely, these bastards are wrecking the universe; turning everything into a gaudy festival of tactless shouting. Thanks to their meddling, I’m going to have to stand behind my own end credits, in a stamp-sized window, thronged with virtual hoardings, saluting them and their latest idiotic triumph.
[1] It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.