A Slight Change in BBC Logo Costed $1.8 Million

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is the national broadcaster of United Kingdom, is one of the world’s oldest national broadcaster and the national broadcaster in the world by the number of employees, employing more than 22,000 staff in total. In 2017, there was a controversy regarding the change BBC has made in its new logo that looks kind of similar to the old one. Being a public sector company, people criticized about it on social media platforms that those $1.8 million could be put to better use like pension payments of old people or any other public expenditure.

BBC has a large variation of logos, the most common was the one that was made up of the 3 grey boxes, having some space between the boxes and the initials of the company name were written in the font-family of Gill Sans. The logo was revealed online, but it was first launched on US streaming service BBC Select in February,2017. This new logo, actually very similar to old one, features a slightly smaller font and larger gaps between those three grey boxes. This evidently seems irrational to from a layman’s point of view. But, BBC has quite a compelling argument in favor of this decision.

“We are simply using our own font – which we own the intellectual rights to – to tidy up the blocks when we update content or BBC products.”, a BBC spokeswoman said in a statement obtained by Metro, defending the design change. The cost incurred was not in making changes in the logo, but to make a new font so that it could allow them to use their in-house typeface, BBC Reith, rather than Gill Sans which otherwise would require licensing fees.

Now, the design and its implementation are owned by the BBC, allowing the Corporation ultimate flexibility as they continue their mission to inform, educate, and entertain. Despite receiving much criticism and hate from the public regarding this move, the company don’t have to pay the licensing fees for using Gill Sans. Also, this move is the part of cost-cutting drive across BBC and has targeted to save $950 million a year by March 2022.

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