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The Gherkin scrolls across the screen, while what appears to be a military aircraft flies directly towards the Sir Norman Foster-designed City of London landmark. The vehicle carries a bright red cargo with the white logo 'Comedy Central' emblazoned across it.

The motif crashes into the Gherkin, also known as 30 St Mary Axe, which, rather than standing firm, bends and bobbles as the craft and the logo fly off into the distance.

This humorous advertisement was part of the rebranding of the Paramount Comedy television channels into Comedy Central on 6 April last year. Approaching the first anniversary of this relaunch, it is becoming increasingly clear just how successful the move has been: in the first few weeks, the channel's average viewing figures soared 70 per cent.

Flagship shows Two and a half men and South Park went from 300,000 to 500,000 and 180,000 to 300,000 viewers respectively. As Paramount Comedy, the channel had two to three shows that hovered around and upwards of 100,000 viewers: now there are seven or eight.

This boost is typical of the success of rebranding television channels and radio stations in recent years. Though there have also been some difficult relaunches, such as changing Virgin Radio to Absolute in 2008, the simplicity and relatively low cost of a rebrand - typically between £100,000 to £1 million - has made it the campaign of choice for the broadcast communicator.

Don't play it safe

Chris Hancox admits that he was apprehensive. He was one of the brains behind Paramount Comedy's name change.

Paramount was a strong image that had survived for a dozen years in the UK, despite being something of a niche channel, while rivals had been and gone. But, the name was also a touch misleading.

'The stars and mountain of Paramount stopped us being a cool brand,' explains Hancox, who today is vice president of marketing and creative services at Comedy Central. 'People would switch to us and think they would see big, blockbuster Hollywood stuff.'

Instead, audiences would get 'comedy with a bit of edge to it', argues Hancox. Reruns of Frasier were great for the committed comedy viewer, but not for someone who had turned their remote control to a channel that they hoped would show a Paramount action adventure classic, like an Indiana Jones film.

Using the Comedy Central brand that was part of the same group in America, the channel was able to relaunch with up-todate content.

Under existing agreements in the group, Paramount-branded channels in the UK had to wait six months to broadcast new episodes of South Park. With the Comedy Central name, it could show the latest series at the same time as the US, creating a sense of freshness without altering the programming schedule.

For just £400,000 - maybe half the cost of a major television advertisement - the rebrand brought instant, and so far lasting, results. As comedy viewers channel hopped, they would pause at the channel knowing that they would get what they were looking for. And more people were looking for comedy than in recent years. 'What better time to launch than during a recession?' asks Hancox, rhetorically. 'People were fed up watching the news and wanted to be cheered up.'

London-based public relations agency Eulogy! was hired to help with the relaunch. Chief executive Adrian Brady says that the success of 'a new personality' has given the channel greater confidence to try out new ideas with its programming and presentation.

For example, Comedy Central is currently showing advertisements for its reruns of the Police Academy films that incorporate speech bubbles mocking the cheap production values of the series. Viewers love the advertisements and have a sense of nostalgia for these old comedies.

'Comedy Central is a bit more fun, shouting about itself - when a rebrand works it drives more success,' argues Brady. 'Having a personality means that in our crowded television and radio spaces the channels and stations become destinations of choice, not somewhere you happen to end up flicking to on a Friday night after a pint in the pub.'

Learning shorthand

Martin Smith, head of planning at brand agency Saatchi & Saatchi, agrees that a simple name change can make a channel stand out in what is now a crowded broadcasting marketplace. 'There are 100 programmes on 100 channels, making it impossible to navigate [to the shows that viewers want to find],' Smith explains. 'When something is called 'Dave', you at least have an inkling that it might be a channel for guys.'

In the mid-1980s, when there were only four terrestrial channels, such guidance was unnecessary, but now people need the shorthand of a brand to find the programme that they are after.

It might sound obvious but the name also has to be exciting, which has not always been the case. The UKTV channels, a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Virgin Media, sounded dull. Red Bee Media overhauled ten channels to give them distinct identities, introducing Blighty, Good Food, Alibi and the aforementioned Dave.

The last of these has been a roaring success in the two years since it was introduced, bringing £25 million of additional revenue to the channel.

'Nothing else really changed, no new content,' says Red Bee executive creative director Charlie Mawer. 'But there is a paralysis of choice, so you need to do what good magazines have been doing for years: give the product a reason to be in people's lives.'

So, offer something a bit different. Names like Dave and Blighty have a sense of fun, something that another Red Bee client, Virgin1, was lacking. Richard Branson's empire had succeeded largely because it has been built in its founder's image: charismatic and quirky.

Yet, Mawer argues, the channel lacked that edge. The agency introduced a knitted character called 'Red' that is devilish and arguably even looks a bit like Branson. Red Bee parachuted 10,000 Red puppets into the V music festival and gave him what is now a very popular blog on the Virgin website.

Virgin has now moved from 18th to tenth most watched channel on Freeview. Just as the name 'Dave' made people smile, as it appeared a preposterous name for a television channel in a country weaned on the BBC, so Red became a reason for Virgin1 to be in people's lives.

On 13 April, NBC Universal's Sci Fi channel is rebranding as SyFy with a new on-air look and a tagline Imagine Greater and will kick off with the premiere of US alien invasion series V and action drama Human Target.

The move is part of a global rebranding for the Sci Fi channel, which prompted much criticism when it kicked off in America last summer. One US newspaper described it as the 'dumbest rebranding ever', while Twitter users said it was a name for a mop or a gossip magazine.

Dave Howe, president of Syfy, said the rebranding had re-energised the channel and  harpened its identity. As 'sci fi' referred to an established genre, it could not be trademark protected, which is an important consideration for a network seeking to establish a distinctive identity. Also, according to Howe, sci fi evoked images of 'space, aliens and the future', which turned off some viewers and advertisers. 'We totally expected there to be a backlash from core sci-fi fans,' he says, but the result 'far exceeded our expectations...it's opened up the network to a broader range of viewers' and boosted ratings.

Absolute success?

Not every rebrand can be a success. Absolute Radio bought Virgin Radio for £53.2 million in 2008 and splashed out £15 million on rebranding the station in its own image in September that year. In the following calendar quarter, the average audience fell 500,000 on the previous three months to 1.89 million.

Kevin Whitlock, communications manager at brand agency Ogilvy UK, points out the pitfalls of changing a well-known brand in the hope of longer-term rewards. 'Virgin Radio was such an amazingly strong brand, and all of a sudden it's gone with a name that no-one knows anything about. They've had to work hard to build up that brand again,' he says.

And Absolute has worked hard, using podcasts and live screen concerts online to create new loyalty among younger listeners. So much so that the radio station's typical audience listens to Absolute for longer than at any time in either brand's history, though the listener numbers remain lower.

'It's a hard slog, but Absolute will get there,' says Whitlock. 'It's just taking time to understand what the Absolute brand stands for.'

Absolute Radio's backers have deep pockets and so were willing to risk taking a radio platform but to use their own brand.

Not all broadcasters can afford such gambles. ITN's News at Ten, with the famous bongs of Big Ben signalling the start of the show, was replaced by 6.30pm and 11pm programmes in an attempt to grab two different sets of, and therefore more, viewers.

The BBC moved its flagship news programme to the same timeslot, and though ITN returned to 10pm in 2008 its standing has never really recovered as ratings haemorrhaged to its publicly owned rival.

David Haigh is chief executive of Brand Finance, which includes big names like Budweiser brewer Anheuser Busch and factual television broadcaster the Discovery Channel among its clients.

He says bluntly of the News at Ten move: 'As a result of that rebranding, the programme threw away its Big Ben iconography, allowing the BBC to sweep in. It was questionable whether it should have been moved, and the decision screwed their market share.'

Rebranding, then, is usually a bold move. For Comedy Central and Dave the gamble came up aces. Not so for News at Ten, while it is also not certain that Absolute Radio's horse has come in.

However, the reasons behind the moves are sound: to communicate what the programme, channel or radio station is about makes it unique in the increasingly competitive broadcasting fields. Rebranding might not always prove to be the best move, but from now on it will always have to be an option.

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