AS Gordon Brown’s chief fixer, Stephen Carter has the unenviable task of selling the prime minister to the public. Now it can be revealed how Carter’s wife has helped revamp another British institution - BBC news.

Anna Gorman is involved in a £550,000 rebranding exercise that will result in Saturn-style spheres parading across television screens and colour-coded opening titles for news bulletins in England, Scotland and Wales.

The move is part of the broadcaster’s biggest attempt yet to repackage its core output; as part of the changes, News 24, its rolling news channel, is being renamed BBC News.

Gorman, a glamorous Australian blonde, is part of a team from Lambie-Nairn, a leading design agency, that has been working on the changes with the BBC over the past 18 months. Viewers will be able to judge the new look for themselves on April 21.

Despite the stiff price tag, Gorman’s efforts may meet with greater approval than her husband’s initial attempts to rejuvenate “brand Brown”. Carter, a former public relations executive, was hired by No 10 at the start of the year as the prime minister’s chief strategist.

Since his arrival loyal advisers have been sidelined, yet little improvement has been seen in the poll ratings as Brown lurches from one problem to another.

The BBC revamp is aimed at unifying its news output – across television, radio and the internet - with a consistent, recognisable look. It aims to connect regional, national and international news programmes through a common brand.

There will be new opening titles for shows on the main channels, such as the BBC1 10 O’Clock News. Instead of a red globe on a black background, audiences will see a globe surrounded by pulsating rings, reminiscent of the planet Saturn, set against a white backdrop.

Regional news bulletins will follow a similar format but will have splashes of blue in the opening titles in Scotland, green in Wales and white in news programmes across England, such as Look North and Midlands Today.

The 10 O’Clock and One O’Clock News programmes will share a new “crisp and modern” studio with the BBC’s rolling news channel – placing presenters such as Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce behind a more formal oval-shaped desk.

As well as renaming News 24 more than 10 years after its launch, the corporation will rebrand BBC World, the international news channel, as BBC World News.

The last time the BBC set loose design consultants on its flagship news shows was in 2003. Since then, ITV has relaunched the News at Ten with Sir Trevor McDonald and Five has boosted its ratings by hiring Natasha Kaplinsky for a reported £1m and plonking her on a mauve sofa.

Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director-general and head of journalism, admitted that it was time for a “refresh”, but denied the revamp was directly prompted by recent changes at rival broadcasters. “In a crowded marketplace . . . the BBC has got to stand out clearly, loudly and simply for what it is,” he said. “The BBC that says, ‘Stand still, we don’t need to do anything here’, is on a mission to decline.”

Byford defended the cost of the rebranding, which he claimed would serve the BBC for the next five years. “It gets one heck of a lot of use - you’ll see it every minute of every day,” he said. The BBC also claimed that cost savings would be made by reducing the number of studios used for news programmes.

Byford conceded that the BBC did not accept all of Lambie-Nairn’s ideas, including greater use of white space.

The agency has previously designed “idents” - the short clips which link programmes - for BBC1 and BBC2, but is best known for transforming BT Cell-net, the mobile phone company, into O2.

Gorman, a former BBC marketing executive, met her future husband when they both worked at JWT, one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies.

Carter once described how they ended up being employed on the same contract: “We came clean with the agency and it was decided that one of us should come off the business.

“We decided not to tell the client, so when we went on holiday Anna said she was going to Turkey and I said I was going to Greece.

“Unfortunately, we kept forgetting where we said we were going - and, in the end, we were rumbled.”

The couple married in Melbourne in 1992 and have two children.

A history of big spending

The £550,000 cost of the BBC’s latest revamp of its news output is a bargain compared with previous rebranding exercises.

In 2006, the broadcaster spent £1.2m on eight short clips based around a circle theme to link shows on BBC1. A clip featuring a surfer was shot on location in Mexico, while another so-called “ident” of fishermen piecing together a giant moon was filmed in Croatia.

The clips replaced a series of BBC1 idents from 2002 featuring Bollywood dancers and tangoing couples which cost £700,000.

Last year, BBC2 splashed out another £700,000 on 14 promotional clips lasting less than four minutes in total.

The idents featured the number 2 in a variety of settings to show the channel as a “window on the world”. Three were shot in South Africa because film-makers said they needed sunny weather.

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