TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

Intriuging glimpse of a breakdown at the beginning of this clip.

Courtesy of Neil Miles of this parish, Thames having a few problems rejoining their film after a break, and a very casually worded breakdown caption.

I get the feeling Thames may have been networking that film, as their local crash slide is identical to the one used as a bumper in and out of the film. Seems the ads themselves failed, though they do seem to a little late rejoining the film (almost four minutes break between the two parts - a standard ad break during a film would be about 3m 40secs.

Interesting generic BBC breakdown slide tweeted by Mr Newmarch. Looks similar to the generic BBC presentation shown during the death of Diana.

I’m finally coming back to work pic.twitter.com/o2BDsmtmu9

— Duncan Newmarch (@DuncanNewmarch) May 5, 2020

Yeah, very similar. For an apocalyptic world where all the BBC channels had fallen off air I guess. Like that would ever happen.

http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/continuity/diana_death/dd_bbc_01.jpg
(Meldrum MHP)

I'm still intrigued by this one...

Anyone know the circumstances under which this would be shown? https://t.co/M1Eg8gSGRp

— TV Forum (@tvforum) October 14, 2018

My guess is it would be either a breakdown or holding slide while "BBC Television from London" was on the air during the Diana coverage. One would assume with so much live news coverage you'd want to have something to flash up if everything went awry.

Still no idea why generic BBC branding at the time had to be so bloody sinister.

I must say, I like how they said "sorry"!

If Thames were networking this film, it would've been interesting to see if other regions rejoined it on time, after the ad break, or if they too had to wait for Thames to get things sorted.

When a region, like London (as both Thames and LWT) were networking something, should something serious have gone wrong, like a power cut, could another region, with a spare copy of what was being networked, carry on, where possible, from the point the failure happened?

Probably because it was only ever going to be used under the most serious of circumstances.

Even preceding a Wallace and Gromit video?

The Wrong Trousers is the most serious piece of media ever.

Duncan's caption is probably from the early days of World Service TV when everything was 'BBC' branded.

Maybe someone should ask him?

Isn't that just because of the one time it was seen on air? Without that it's a perfectly nice bit of branding