Power outage at BBC Wales

This is kind of relevant to the thread... The morning after the 1987 storm in the south east, most of BBC One's output between 9am and 1pm was given over to Open Air from Manchester, where the weather had been nowhere near as bad. At times they ditched their usual format, as a TV show about TV, and covered the storm instead.

Every once in a while during their broadcast, Eamonn Holmes would tell viewers the show was having to take a short break of about 20 seconds "while a power change occurs from London". Then an Open Air logo was put on screen, with the caption "Just changing power!" at the bottom. Then the show returned. There was no glitching on screen while the "power change" happened. I've never understood what was actually happening with that.

A really quick bathroom break, perhaps?

Possibly a break was required while switching from generator to mains power because the two would be out of sync?

I wonder whether Open Air would have been going through London on that occasion or if they re-routed to take TV Centre out of circuit? It might be that only areas south of Manchester/Birmingham would have seen any disruption during that switching break?

Yes, I've seen that mornings Open Air and wondered the same. Seems that they did a lot more than they usual slots too, letting Manchester hold the fort while London sorted themselves out

A parr change, surely?

I tried to catch some of these hot new licks on the catchup on the BBC sounds, nothing but silence for me in the periods when they fell off air, and random bits of 5 live. Guessing this must have been a local tape at the TX or something?!

Not a power cut but a slightly unfortunate opening to tonight's late bulletin.

Poor Teleri!

Oops!

When do the kids go back?

Got to give her some credit - at least she had her scripts with her and not a ream of paper like Simon McCoy!