I always thought the bugs were introduced by the U.S. networks on their nightly newscasts so that viewers knew the source of the report. Often local stations would run the story but cut off the "John Jones NBC News Detroit"  at the end. The bug clearly shows the origination of the news segment.

I believe the bugs started on European television in the 60's.  I remember when Channel 11 would show soccer matches in the mid sixties  and any of the matches they featured from Europe always had the network logo in one of the corners.  So you would see the logo of the Italian, French, German network that was producing the game. 

Johnny Lombardi's CHIN TV would show the logo all the time back in the early 70's on their local programming long before it became the norm in North America.  Stations and networks especially the smaller ones would use it as a bit of promotion during the program.   

Don't know if this is true, but I was told that networks in North America started putting the logo on all of their programming when everyone was recording TV programming on their VCR's and would give taped movies to friends or make copies of a movie or show etc.  This was just a reminder that what they were doing was illegal making copies and the logo was always there in the corner to make the point. Also it could have been used for the ratings when more and more stations and cable networks came on.  They would want to make sure that people knew what network and show they were watching.  

I remember a bar that didn't have cable would tape videos off of Much Music or Video Hits and show the videos in the bar.  They would try to edit out the VJ bits and just keep the music video, but the Much Music logo was always there in the corner. They were pretty bad at the editing of the VJ breaks and commercials.

Last edited by paterson1 (October 27, 2021 8:18 pm)

Anyway, this is what I was told by some TV folk a long time ago and if it ever went to court for pirating, the station or network logo shown during  the movie, video, sitcom would help to prove piracy.  The bug is not an issue with me at all, don't even notice it unless they start with an animated colour logo like CHCH for the first 10 seconds and move to just the faint white logo.  I remember back in the late 90's  CTV had animated colour bugs coming out of commercials, with a rubik's cube effect of the CTV logo, very well done and they varied it quite a bit.

With the cluttered media universe the identification of the network, station, service etc is essential, you are right it is here to stay.  Saturday Night Live has both the Global Comedy logo and NBC logo ghosted on the screen, but most prime time shows have a clean feed with only one logo.

I remember when Rob Ford was on the news all over the place, the Toronto Star imprinted a large ghost logo over their exclusive video that ran on news networks around the world.  Globe and Mail does the same thing.  So no matter where it runs, they get some credit for the scoop. 

On NFL simsubs, CTV  puts their bug in the top left corner of the screen. The U.S. network bug is clearly viewable bottom right.

This happens a lot and if you were in the control room while the newscast is on, you can often hear the producer - if he or she isn't distracted by something else - yell "Lose the key!" But by the time the graphics operator does it, the viz is usually over and it's too late. This never used to be a real issue in the past, because a super would come up, stay on screen for about 5 or 6 seconds and then be taken off. 

Now they're glued onto the story for its entirety, something that's never really made much sense to me. But the all-news stations started doing it a number of years ago and now every single newscast - including the local ones - do it non-stop. It's really not necessary for a non-stop key. But they do it anyway. 

And can someone remind NBC that not EVERY story is "breaking news?" It's just getting silly. 

I remember the bugs on the big three US networks as early as 1993. CBC started using one around 1994, though I don’t recall CTV using one until 1998.

I can remember in the mid-90s Canadian stations would cover the bug with their own logo if it was a news item picked up from another station or a US network. Global used to do that, and I remember CFPL in London did that a lot. First it was a BBS logo, and then after being bought by CHUM, they’d put a giant “News Now” logo over the City logo if showing an item from CityPulse. It was incredibly distracting.