Just when you thought that finally Channel 9 had settled on a watermark to use, they surprise us all with their incredible creativity. And this is the result.

That watermark is so good, we need to take a close up look at it. And by close up, I mean let’s look at this thing as it would appear on your reasonable sized TV screen.

You’ve gotta love that!

What an absolute typographical nightmare. The H is cut off, but the D isn’t, so the whole circle-thing is lopsided. In fact, the first vertical stroke of the H appears to be longer than the second, though it might just be an illusion brought on by having the H cut off in that way. Spacing is inconsistent between elements, and the font itself is so vastly different from the font used on the 9 that it sticks out like dog’s balls. The watermark now takes up even more space, and of course is still in the 4:3 space.

Why would Channel 9 do this? Well, clearly they haven’t the creativity to come up with something unique, so they’ve copied the 7 HD watermark. But in Microsoft style, they’ve changed it slightly to try not to look like they’ve copied it (”Let’s use a circle instead of a square!”) and ended up with something cheap and nasty.

Channel 9 - laughing-stock of the industry.