The name could be anyone’s. What puts a broadcaster in a year is whether it could exist at all — a national service alone, or the private stations the law let in — and what it put its name on: a plate on the microphone, a cube, the corner of the picture, the side of a satellite truck. This is the research behind the On Air Studio.
Radio from the early twenties, television from the fifties almost everywhere (Britain in 1936, Greece not until 1966, Turkey 1968); for most of the century one national broadcaster in most of Europe, until the country let private stations in — Italy in 1976, France in 1981 (radio) and 1984 (television), Germany in 1984, Greece in 1987 (radio) and 1989 (television), Spain’s private television in 1990, Portugal’s in 1992. Britain had commercial television from 1955 and commercial radio only from 1973; America always had both. The studio knows these dates for eleven countries — the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece (Ελλάδα), Portugal, the Netherlands, Turkey and Russia — and offers only the broadcasters a year could have.
| Years | How a station drew its name |
|---|---|
| 1920–1965 | Call letters in a cast or enamelled plate with pointed ends, bolted to the microphone for the press photographers; the mast with radio waves going out from it. |
| 1950–1990 | The channel number in a ring, or inside the rounded-square shape of the picture tube; the pop station’s brush script with a swash. |
| 1962–1999 | Heavy geometric letters reversed out of a block; from the seventies, italic numbers with speed stripes in two or three colours. |
| 1975–now | The FM station sells itself by its frequency: the number large, the name small, level bars or a wave beside it. |
| 1986–2005 | The first computer-rendered logos: chrome, bevel and a ring; then the italic wordmark with a swoosh. |
| 2002–2014 | The glossy bubble with a highlight across its top, like a button on a screen. |
| 2010–now | Flat: a square or rounded tile with the number or the letters, and a plain sans wordmark. |
For most of television’s history the channel showed its name only between programmes. A permanent logo in a corner of the picture — the bug, or DOG in Britain — came in with the private channels: Italy’s local stations from about 1980, France’s from the mid-eighties, Greece’s from their first year, 1989; American stations and networks from the early nineties; the British terrestrial channels only in the second half of the nineties. At first it was solid and in colour; from the mid-nineties it is usually white and see-through. It sits inside the safe area — 80 % of a 4:3 picture, 90 % of a 16:9 one — so that no television of the period crops it. The frame itself is dated: 4:3 PAL (768 × 576 square pixels) or NTSC (640 × 480) until the country’s channels went widescreen, 16:9 standard definition, then HD at 1920 × 1080. A LIVE caption in the other corner belongs to the late eighties on; a clock under the logo is a habit of Greek, Turkish, Italian and Spanish channels from the nineties; HD beside the logo, of the years a channel was proud of it.
| Where | What a frequency could be |
|---|---|
| Western Europe | FM from the fifties, 87.5 to 100 MHz; above 100 only after the band was widened to 108 MHz in the eighties. Medium wave gave its wavelength in metres — “on 208” — until the seventies, then its frequency in kHz on a 9 kHz grid (from 1978). |
| United States | FM 88.1–107.9 MHz on odd tenths only; AM 540–1700 kHz in 10 kHz steps. Call signs begin with W east of the Mississippi and K west of it. |
| Soviet Union | VHF radio on the OIRT band, 65.9–74 MHz, marked УКВ; the western band arrives with the commercial stations of the nineties, and both run side by side for twenty years. |
| Greece, Italy, Spain… | A decimal comma: 98,4, not 98.4 — on the logo as much as in the listings. |
A radio car or a station wagon with the name on its doors in the fifties and sixties; the panel van of the electronic news-gathering years from the seventies; the satellite (SNG) truck with its dish from the mid-eighties; the high-roof van and the SUV since. The lettering is the station’s mark on the doors and the side panels, a band of the period’s stripes or swoosh, the frequency or channel and the telephone; the number or the mark large on the roof for the helicopter; a sun strip across the top of the windscreen — PRESS, TV, the station’s name — and a card on the dashboard. The studio gives each piece at true size, tiled on A4 or A3 with a 10 mm overlap, or whole for a sign shop’s printer and plotter, with the cut line on its own CutContour plate.
Every station, name, call sign, frequency, address and mark is invented, and the Checks panel names any real broadcaster it finds in what you type — a real channel’s logo on a prop needs that channel’s permission. The telephones are from the ranges set aside for drama. The dashboard card says in small type that it is a film prop and not a press or parking permit. The crew’s own ID cards are made in the ID Card Studio, with the station as the issuer.
Every date on this page is built into the studio: pick a country and a year and it offers only the broadcasters, marks, flags and vehicles that year could have — and the Checks panel says what an audience could catch.
Open the On Air Studio →