“Set your calculators to ‘maths’,” comes the instruction.

“The Beeb have spent £1.2m on those new logos. Let’s assume they last as long as the previous set: 4 1/2 years. The BBC’s TV Licensing Review 2005 gives a figure of 24.6m for the number of licences.

“So, writing off the cost of the idents over their estimated lifetime gives a figure of 1.08p per licence per year. This amounts to about 43 minutes worth of each year’s licence.

“Write that down in your copybooks now.

“In a not necessarily fair comparison, an hour of drama costs £500k, according to the Governors’ Annual Report.”

Okay, thanks Neil, I’ll take it from here.

[Clears throat, and presses mouse button to reveal the next PowerPoint slide] All of which equals the following surprising conclusion: Good grief, there are people out there actually reading the OTT Blog?!

“Interesting stuff about the new BBC idents,” says Nick, generously. 

“Is it just me, or is some of the ‘waste of money’ fury going on on ‘Have Your Say’ a bit reactionary?

“1.2 million quid isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, is it? How much do these things usually cost?”

Bright, colourful, exciting and imaginative, they’re quite possibly the best ones since – well, since a long time. The current bunch of “dancers”, depsite being based a neat concept, quickly lost their appeal by virtue of being so bland. Once you’d seen them a few times they became boring and predictable. There were too many faces, doing too many carefully chereographed stunts and shenanigans, and they ultimately ended up losing impact and resonance by dint of being too forced and stylised.

The floating globes were better, albeit somewhat curmudgeonly, because they commanded a sense of authority and dignity. They called attention to themselves without going over-the-top, and could establish an atmosphere befitting whatever programme they were preceding. They also gave you some space to think.

This new set, however, could be even better thanks to the way they combine that essence of authority with a quirky, almost cheeky imagination that doesn’t especially rely on faces or places to set a tone.

They get a resounding thumbs-up as far as this writer is concerned, and even better, the idents are debuting the day BBC1 launches its killer double bill of Saturday night entertainment, Robin Hood and Strictly Come Dancing.

Following in the footsteps of the famous globe, the red balloon and the “ethnic” dancers, design agency Red Bee Media has concocted a series of idents, of which there will ultimately be 16. The red colour scheme has been retained but a new lower-case typeface has been created, a move away from the current uniform use of Gill Sans by the BBC.

It appears that the lead has been taken from the BBC4 idents which use everyday backgrounds with overlaid text, although each of the new BBC1 efforts is based around the theme of a circle (but there is no globe amongst them!) which is apparently “a symbol of community and unity” according to Charlie Mawer of Red Bee. 

The eight initial idents are entitled: Bikes, Ring-a-Roses, Kites, Moon, Surfer, Windows, Football and Hippos. Each ident will be used to correspond with the type of programme that it is trailing, for example the Hippos ident might be used in conjunction with a wildlife programme. Expect to see them on your screens from 7 October…