Peter Horrocks at the BBC puts commenters firmly in their place. Quantitative research – not the self-selecting (qualitative?) input of 150+ commenters – will be what guides any tweaks to the BBC News re-brand.

Despite the knockdown, BBC commenters keep coming back for more. And some of them are really quite funny in a dry sort of way.

Like this one:

138. At 9:13 pm on 21 Apr 2008, nosferatu_d2 wrote:

“We have asked members of the audience about the key things they associate with us. The characteristics that emerged were – the phrase ‘BBC News’ itself, our distinctive music (by David Lowe), the globe, the colour red, the clarity and accuracy of our news services.”

How very true!

I think you should concentrate, however, on the really important aspect of the BBC brand, which is, of course, the colour red.

Some day, hopefully, we will see a time when the graphic is a solid, motionless, uncluttered block of red.

Good to see the re-branding team had the foresight to draw the audience more in this direction.

The bold changes made have certainly taken the Corporation to the very threshold of a future in which simply hearing the name of the BBC will, in an organic sort of way, lead the viewer quite naturally into a “seeing red” scenario.