The Lost Art of Channel Bumpers

“Hi, I’m Kendyl and you’re watching Disney Channel!” is a phrase I’ve always dreamed of saying. Like many 2000s kids, this iconic line is engraved in my mind, sitting in a bank of glittery childhood memorabilia. I can still imagine Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers waving their magical wands while four catchy notes jingled in my living room. 

The Disney Channel wand identification is just one of many notable television bumpers—short programming between shows and advertisements. These snippets of branding first came about in 1926 with the NBC chime, implemented to notify affiliate stations that the program has ended and they can cut to local news or announcements. The memorable notes, G-E-C, marked the NBC brand for nearly fifty years. 

The Federal Communications Commission began requiring stations to air identification announcements every hour to notify watchers what channel they were watching. By the 80s, every channel had created jingles or channel ID bumpers that resonated with their given brand image: the playful theme song of Nickelodeon complete with orange slime in 1984, the iconic 1981 rock tune and astronaut in the original MTV ident, or the 1980s claymation bumps for ABC Saturday morning cartoons. 

https://youtu.be/8N3NC6gx-wg?feature=shared 

TV programming has gaps of liminal space—moments in between shows not just for ads, but margins to create a brand image, to tell short stories, to promote other shows or rising stars, to convince your audience to stay put—we will be right back. These brief interludes of art completed the viewing experience. I still remember hearing Bridget Mendler’s song, “Hurricane” for the first time in a Disney Channel bumper, a nostalgic melody that transports me to my days sitting on the carpet, eyes glued to the screen. 

In fact, the Disney Channel is unique for its lack of ads. Instead of typical commercial breaks, they used the programming block exclusively for bumpers to promote future Disney stars or other shows, tell minute-long stories with “The Time I” or “Pass the Plate” series, or even play mini-episodes of content like Mickey Mouse shorts. For a brief history of Disney Channel bumpers and the origin of the tune, I highly recommend watching Defunctland’s documentary on YouTube. 

https://youtu.be/33QPzSyRWBg?feature=shared 

The other day I tried binging Wizards of Waverly Place, a childhood favorite, on Disney Plus. While I definitely do not long for the interrupting ads that came with cable, there is a piece of nostalgia within these bumpers that has vanished with the rise of cord-cutting. Somewhere in the archives (or perhaps on YouTube), not tied down to any streaming service, is a collection of missing art and lost labor of short-form content and animation. 

In the age of streaming, I cannot help but wonder if we are losing something more than just channel bumpers—we are losing brand identity and infectious content that feels unnecessary yet so pleasing to watch. Memorable chimes and catchphrases are fleeting, how now can networks differentiate themselves on the services they are on? Even ad-tier options like Hulu omit ID bumpers—it is easy to know what you are watching when you have spent hours picking it out on a site before pressing play. Yet, when I begin a new series on Netflix, I hardly recognize the channel, it's simply deducted to a show on Netflix. 

Though I could be alone in my nostalgic yearning for bumpers, I believe there could be some sort of consensus for this longing. In 2021, TikTok users recreated the ridiculous and nihilistic Adult Swim bumps, ending every video with the famous [AS]. 

https://youtu.be/GwtMo5owq_4?feature=shared 

I am unsure as to whether TV bumps will ever make a return to our screens with the contemporary urge for instantaneous content. However, I think we could benefit from the bumper philosophy of slowing down, pausing, delaying the gratifications of binging, temporarily being sucked out of a series and briefly placed into reality. I appreciate the allotted minutes to step back from a show, maybe grab a snack. And don’t worry, they will be right back.