Sony Pictures Television
Compiled by James Fabiano
1st Logo
(2002-)
Nickname: "The Shining Bars"
What Is This?: In late 2002, Sony Pictures Entertainment decided to retire the Columbia name and logo from its television division-- renaming it "Sony Pictures Television". For the first time since 1975, the Torch Lady or anything resembling Columbia's symbol is nowhere to be seen; instead, the corporate logo for Sony Pictures was introduced to television viewers for the first time. It is widely expected that the Sony Pictures logo will spread to Movies and Home Entertainment in the next few years, retiring the torch lady for good.
Logo: Against a lined background,
the words "SONY PICTURES TELEVISION" (all in the Sony
"font" and stacked word by word with "SONY"
being largest) emerge and downwardly zoom away from the screen.
The three words aren’t directly stacked at first, but as the
animation progresses, they slide into place. A horizontal line is
drawn below “PICTURES” and above
“TELEVISION”. While this happens, a flash of light
appears on the left side of the screen, and the lines in the
background themselves back away as well, eventually moving back
to the upper part of the screen and into a diagonal pattern to
form the logo. The flash dissipates and we see an oblong
orange-white glare surrounding the logo and words, which shrinks
into the bars to give it a shine. The finished logo appears
against a shaded blue background.
Variation: There are two distinct versions of this logo, a
short version and a long version. Both are generally the same,
except the longer version features an extreme close-up of the
“stacked” letters at the beginning of the animation,
and a longer shot of the finished logo. A very short version of
the logo has been seen where the animation starts from where the
third-to-last note of the theme plays.
FX: Words flying down, bars zooming
back and "tilting," the white flash and glare shrinking
into the bars. Nice CGI effects.
Music: A majestic, five-note theme that is fully
orchestrated and sounds sort of like a combination between the
TriStar Television theme of 1993 and the Universal Television
theme of 1975-1991. The long version has a “twittering”
noise before the main fanfare, and the last note is held much
longer, but both versions have essentially the same music. A very
short version of the theme, where only the last three notes are
played, has also been heard.
Availability: Is quickly becoming more and more common.
The short one is seen on most shows, the longer version shows up
on some first-run syndication shows, and still another version--
with the Boxes of Boredom music-- shows up from time to time, but
is considered very rare. Unlike its hated predecessor, this is
not being used for logo plastering in many cases; on older shows,
it follows the original logo!
Scare Factor: Not scary, and is generally a very nice
logo. So far, it has avoided the disdain of its predecessor,
chiefly because of the better animation and because this actually
signals logo preservation of Sony logos.