Digital on-screen graphic

"DOG" redirects here. For the animal, see dog.

In a typical digital on screen graphic, the station's logo appears in a corner of the guideline rating

. In Australia, this is known as a Programme Return Graphic (PRG).

During televised sports events, a DOG may also display a few game-related statistics such as the current score. This has led many people in Canada and the United States to refer to it as a score bug.

===United Kingdom=== mY SISTER! In the UK, DOGs most commonly appear in the top-left hand corner on British channels. DOGs were first used on satellite and cable television systems in their early days, when broadcasts were unmarked. Channel 5 was the first to use DOGs on an analogue terrestrial channel in 1997. The DOG was originally very bright and noticeable, and was soon toned down. Channel 5 said that the DOG was used to assist viewers in tuning to the new channel once its test transmissions had ceased. Following the rebrand to "five" in 2002 the DOG disappeared until October 2007.

The BBC has a DOG on each of its digital-only channels. In October 1998, it added DOGs to BBCs One and Two but following a large number of viewer complaints they were removed two months later. The DOGs appear in the top left-hand corner on other channels except BBC News 24 (which is bottom left and forms part of integrated information graphics) and its international counterpart, BBC World (which has both have a static and similar to News 24). Whilst BBC Four and BBC Parliament have static DOGs, the ones on the BBC Three, CBBC Channel and CBeebies feature moving elements. ITV also uses DOGs on all its channels besides ITV1.

On British digital systems such as Sky Digital and Freeview, where channels have a set EPG number and a name displayed across the bottom of the screen when changing channel, large or intrusive DOGs have been deemed unnecessary by some users. More recent additions are graphics which appear at the end of a programme to tell the viewer what's up next, despite this information being available at a touch of a button on digital TV. Many viewers find this practice annoying, distracting and unnecessary. Moving animated DOGs are already used by some channels such as the MTV channels. More4 is the only British network that has an almost transparent logo like the American style and, along with its sister channel E4, the DOG stays in the far corner of the screen during widescreen programmes, with most other channels keeping theirs within the 4:3 "safe area".

North America

A typical score bug on a televised sporting event will consist of the station logo alongside the current score of game, and other information, such as time elapsed.

The first network in the United States to produce a score bug was ABC, which used one on the telecast of the 1994 Purolator 500 NASCAR event. A transparent digit counted down the number of laps remaining in the race. A similar bug was used during ABC's telecast of the 1994 Indianapolis 500 and 1994 Brickyard 400. ABC also incorporated the Sports Bug for their 1994 World Cup coverage, providing the time and score on the game as well as enabling advertiser sponsorship to broadcast games without interruptions. Later that fall, FOX introduced a full-score bug for its NFL coverage, known as the "FoxBox", as did cable network ESPN. ABC expanded theirs to Monday Night Football in 1996. CBS introduced their's upon returning to the NFL in the fall of 1998, and NBC in 2001 during its coverage of the XFL.

The first score banner, which takes up the top of the screen, was used for minor league hockey broadcasts by SportsChannel New York in their coverage of the Albany River Rats of the American Hockey League during the National Hockey League lockout of 1994-95. It was the brainchild of director Joe O'Rourke, and was implemented by producer Roland Dratch and font coordinator Dave Katz. FOX then used the score banner for its NASCAR coverage in 2001. FOX then expanded the scoring banner to all sports. Fox Sports Net also uses a scoring banner for basketball, hockey, baseball and soccer coverage, as do many other local broadcasters of sporting events.

ABC introduced a FOX-like banner, but along the bottom of the screen, for Monday Night Football in 2005, its last year of the franchise. The network introduced a revised version February 5, 2006, during an NBA game, as well as during that day's presentation of Super Bowl XL, which quickly became used for all sports on the network. ABC returned to a bug in September when the sports division became ESPN on ABC, however, the ESPN networks and ABC have since gone to banners, except for ESPN Plus regional and ESPNU college football telecasts, where the bugs are still used. NBC also began using a scoring banner, along the bottom like ABC's, in 2005 for its coverage of Notre Dame football home game telecasts, which also quickly became used for all sports on the network except for hockey, where the banner runs atop the screen, which have been adapted by Canadian broadcasters, CBC, Rogers Sportsnet and TSN. The networks of Turner Broadcasting System used the traditional score bugs until they began broadcasting the 2007 Major League Baseball Division Series, in which they converted to a top screen banner. ESPN began using a banner starting with the 2006 FIFA World Cup and MLB Home Run Derby, a bottom-screen banner for NBA and AFL telecasts and in 2007, a top-screen banner for NASCAR and baseball telecasts, plus a center-screen bug for their Monday Night Football telecasts. Starting in 2007, they added banners for college football and in college basketball telecasts. In addition, ESPN's college sports telecasts added three (college football) or five (college basketball) yellow stripes, representing the timeouts the team has left to the banner. In 2006, CBS began using a bottom-of-the-screen banner for NCAA Basketball telecasts but retains the traditional box for all football broadcasts, both college and professional. The one exception among all the networks is motor racing, as all of them will use the banner for these races. In 2007, TBS began using a top-screen banner for postseason baseball broadcasts.

Some type of continuous graphic indicating time, score or standings are now used in every major sport televised in the U.S., except golf. In that sport, leaderboards are still flashed on and off screen at regular intervals, with a full rundown every half hour or so.

In the United Kingdom, score bugs are commonly known as scorebars. The first major British network to carry scorebars in their televised sports games was Sky. Other terrestrial networks followed suit, and all football games on the BBC, ITV and Five now use scorebars. Like in the United States, the scorebar is traditionally placed in the top left-hand corner of the screen, an exception occurring at the beginning of the 2007-08 football season, when Sky Sports experimented with a bar at the bottom-left of the screen. This scorebar was not popular though, and by September it had been returned to the top left of the screen.

From its inception, cable network VH-1 commonly used a bug in the corner of the screen while broadcasting music videos for copyright purposes. MTV also did the same, beginning in 1993. MTV first began using a bug while videos were shown on the programme Beavis and Butt-head, displaying the show's logo during the videos (but not Beavis and Butt-head's commentary of them).

In Canada, networks and channels display logo bugs the same way as the UK and the US, with only minor differences. Canada often sim-subs a programme over a US station, which often either uses a clean feed without an American bug from the American broadcaster, or is fed directly from the Canadian broadcaster. But in some cases (such as during specific shows and sporting events), an American bug is usually present. The Canadian broadcaster usually, will either cover up the logo with an opaque logo, or will "co-brand" the show with their logo in a different corner of the screen.

Germany

File:ARD Karte mit Logos.png

Map of the nine regional broadcasting members of ARD and their logos

In the 1980s, puplic broadcasters started to randomly show logos to prevent video piracy. After the first private stations emerged in 1984, constantly showing their logo the public broadcasters soon followed. Today practically all TV stations show their logo and often these are an integral part of their design using fluent animations to transition between programms, previews and advertising, as well as displaying additional information such as teletext numbers or the name of the following programm. Most logos are transparent during programming though some channels (i.e. kabel eins uses a bright orange coloured logo) don't. Also the majority of the channels show show their logo in either the top-left or top-right corner of the picture though there are exceptions (i.e. RTL II in the bottom-right or N24 logo in the bottom-left and date and time in the top-right).

Adverse effects

File:Tviexcessivedog.png

TVI, a Portuguese TV channel, is widely known for filling the borders of the screen with its DOGs. This capture shows the left and the right sides of the screen labeled with the same word, Estreia (program debut).

While most bugs are simply small, transparent logos, some are not transparent and a few are large. Nickelodeon GAS uses their normal logo in the conventional size, but because it is not transparent, it blocks the timers that are commonly used in their programmes. Both Disney Channel and sibling Toon Disney use a transparent logo, but it is larger than usual. Some are not entirely transparent, and may slightly obscure the item they are in front of, like the bug used by Nickelodeon. Sometimes in Canada as mentioned, during specific shows, the logo of an American broadcaster is usually covered up by an opaque logo, which can also cause viewer backlash. An example of a similar backlash from this practice from outside North America occurred when the Scottish digital television channel S2 used an opaque bug to cover up the bug instituted by ITV2 (which it ended up becoming a full simulcast of after a few years, later replaced by the actual ITV2).

The US Cable channels Animal Planet and The History Channel both have large, colorful, and sometimes moving bugs which viewers may find to be distracting.

Furthermore, there have also been reports of TV screens being damaged by phosphor burn-in, when a channel displaying a non-transparent logo has been left on for a prolonged period of time. Plasma display manufacturers warn that burn-in time can be as low as 10 hours for a high contrast static image.

Connections with sponsor tags

Another graphic on television usually connected with sports is the sponsor tag. It shows the logos of certain sponsors, accompanied by some background relevant to the game, the network logo, announcement and music of some kind.

See also

• News ticker
• Lower thirds

External links

• DOG Watch! - 625.uk.com - Website documenting and questioning the use of DOGs on British television