5 December 2009

The Hurricane of Destruction

I've got a pretty good idea on viewership statistics for Bahrain TV; they're probably around 7 people (4 of who are the channel operators and producers who have to check the channel for errors etc).

I don't know why the station is still alive really; it was considered pretty advanced back in the 80's, in comparison to the other countries in the region (ie, Kuwait, UAE, etc)... Yup, and it managed to stay in the 80's and on the same level, while all the countries around us moved forward. Not good.

Now we've got advanced programming from Kuwait, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi, MBC, etc etc, but Bahrain TV is still... Well comic to say the least. Whether the quality of the TV shows (which look like they've been filmed with a mobile phone camera), to the bad scripts and fake acting, or the website that's been "under construction" for the past two years.

Anyway; so a few days ago I heard that BTV decided to change their logo. Yup, their logo! How about you guys change your frickin' employees who have been running the station for the past 40 years? As if changing the logo is going to push up views - Random scenario: Hey Ahmed, can you change the channel to BTV? I heard they have a new logo, let's sit and watch that for a few hours.

Emm... No.

But seriously, Ministry of Info (the guys who run Bahrain TV and Radio), get your act together! We're supposed to be displaying world-class productions through our various media; TV is one obvious portal to the world. I can cite specific examples of why our TV channel is so bad, but I would rather not spread that sort of embarrassment to our country online.

Maybe you (Bahrain) should make me the next head of TV & Radio. No seriously, come on, i'll turn this whole thing around. But anyway, for your enjoyment, the old and new logos:

Old:


Nice and simple, obvious and to the point. Nice portrayal of red and white symbolizing the colors of our flag, with the B looking like some sort of butterfly or whatever, possibly symbolizing how we've let the opportunity of creating a top-notch TV channel fly away :?

New:


No idea in the hell what this is. Sources claim this is supposed to be some sort of calligraphy saying "Bahrain" in Arabic but i've been staring at the thing for the past 20 minutes and I still can't see where half the Arabic letters are. It looks more like a hurricane symbolizing the total destruction we've managed to let the Ministry of Information do to our media channels.


Way to go BTV. Love the new logo. I'm soooo gonna keep the channel on all the time just so I can catch this beautiful graphical piece of art wherever I go.

6 comments:

Mahmood Al-Yousif said...

This, my friend, is the work of a "brand consultant" that charged them probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of dinars to come up with. No one will understand it other than the "visionary" who created it.

It should be easy enough to find this "visionary" by investigating the Tender Board archives online. You will probably find the start of the thread of costs in there too.

The thing that the branding expert did not emphasise enough to the respected ladies and gentlemen at our national broadcaster is the fact that they have to be true to their promises, like paying vendors on time. Something, I'm told, is near impossible at the moment as they have overspent their allocated budgets by truckloads, again, but continued to issue their POs.

The other equally important thing is that even with this "change" in logo, will it actually change the mentality of the people there? I doubt that very much. It will be the very same dirge we have seen over the last 20 years and more, while the true Bahraini talent they do have access to migrates with their programs and ideas to other stations in the Gulf and beyond.

Missy said...

how come I clearly see "البحرين" in the new logo!

Anonymous said...

Logo looks like DNA to me...

Heba AlSamt said...

at least the new one in arabic too .. I like!

Anonymous said...

wait till you see batelco's new logo. shame if they paid even a single dinar for that.

Anonymous said...

I like the TV logo. Batelco logo is bad, its cost is BD500K.