bbc.co.uk rebrand

Published on 6 May 2004 in , , ,

So today the BBCi website became bbc.co.uk. An amazing transformation which I’m sure a few people haven’t even noticed.

Funnily enough I noticed, just as I have been for the last week or so as BBCi references were slowly being removed and replaced by BBC or bbc.co.uk references instead.

Can’t exactly say there was a tear in my eye but it did make me think of a certain night around 2.5 years ago.

Back in November 2001 I was one of the launch team who were sat in work at midnight watching as the entire of BBC Online slowly but surely transformed itself into BBCi.

I was there to make sure the web search – which launched at the same time as the BBCi brand – worked properly, and work properly it did. Well as far as I can remember anyway. To be honest I don’t remember much about that night bar sitting on someone elses desk from around 10pm until very early in the morning.

At some point there was pizza and bottles of coke, and around 5:30am, a silver car whisked me away back to my home. Central London to Ealing seemed to take about 25 mins at that point in the day.

Once home, I sat in the bathroom for a bit. No, the pizza wasn’t dodgy, but Catherine’s parents were visiting and I didn’t actually know if they were in the bedroom or sleeping in the front room. After about 10 minutes of feeling very tired, I took the risk of thinking that Catherine would have gone on the floor in the front room so I crawled in there and collapsed.

The following day I slept for a very long time.

The launch night wasn’t exactly a very exciting night, but it happened and we got through it without any real problems. And now BBCi on the web, is gone.

This time there was no explosion of a relaunch – it’s all been rather staggered and sane. The rebrand took place at a much more sensible hour of around 2:30pm.

For the BBCi lovers, don’t worry. It’s still going to be around on interactive television.