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BBC One Breakdown

Major Technical fault before Panorama - Video on page 11 (November 2020)

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WO
Worzel
ChipperBird posted:
dbl posted:
nigel posted:
The breakdown slides are worse than in the 70’s and 80’s now.
No music and not even a menu of “Programs this evening on One”.

Hmmm...maybe a little unfair, this was a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXHAn5NykYU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcbpI0hu2-o

Tonight's clearly was a massive fail and the priority was just to get things going again.


The 2017 breakdown didn't play out like that for everyone - was this a regional one? As I remember it playing out without a slide or CA to hide the playlist constantly going back to that weird "Breaking News" sting that looks like an awkward mock (was it ever actually used outside of this Breakdown?)

I do remember that evening the usual BBC News graphics winked in and out and they eventually switched to pre-recorded stuff till they could hand to BBC World early.

But I'm assuming that generally the BBC would anticipate that any issue these days would normally be fixed quick enough that you don't really need the archive music on standby or would be awkward to put on if it's fixed in seconds. At least we always have archives of the old ones with that comfy Muzak eh?


Yes the News channel used that breaking news sting quite frequently, still do but an updated Reith'd one.
BE
Bennyboy1984
RDJ posted:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RefUMz6PRzY


Wow what a mess! I’ve never seen a breakdown slide pop up that many times before and what was that frozen BBC Two slide doing, looks like it glitched all over the screen.
CH
channel4squares1
BBC One Wales claims it was a interesting night indeed. Ending the night with the cats taking a nap.
IS
Inspector Sands
Worzel posted:

Yes the News channel used that breaking news sting quite frequently, still do but an updated Reith'd one.

Yep, it's used as part of a wipe so it's normally blink and you miss it
CO
commseng
I didn't see it at the time, but reading through this thread, I think we can all agree it was not an evening when any of us would want to have been working in BBC Pres or whatever NC1 is called now.
One thing that I've learned - Panorama is now made by BBC NI.
Was it a late edit that lead to the whole issue, with a hurried file transfer that had timecode problems causing the playout software to fall over?
If so how did Belfast manage to play it out without the same issues?
I assume that there is a main and backup (and probably an off site DR backup too) did they all fall over due to the same one issue?

With the benefit that automation brings - fewer errors, fewer staff, lower running costs, and the ability to handle not just the video and audio but also the associated data and so on, there is also now the operational issue that when there is a fault it is difficult to work around.

Can anyone working in Pres explain to a simple old engineer why it isn't possible to have something downstream of playout to take manual control? If there is a way of switching between the main / backup / DR there has to be some control possible. Even if some of the data and multiple audio streams are lost while this happens, it has to be better for the majority of viewers than what was seen on air last night.
MarkT76 and Rexogamer gave kudos
JA
james-2001
commseng posted:

One thing that I've learned - Panorama is now made by BBC NI.
.


I think different episodes are made by different people, I'm pretty sure some episodes are made by indies.
m_in_m and Rexogamer gave kudos
TC
TonyCurrie
Inspector Sands posted:
This Is Granada posted:

I'm assuming Wales had their own copy of Eastenders seeing as they were the last to start tonight's ep.

So Wales and N.I. both had a copy of Eastenders, so at 8:05pm both could have played it as planned. This would have given Wales thinking time till 8:30 to work out what to show at 8:30pm as they could not play Panorama directly themselves or opt into the N.I. feed showing it

You said yourself that you assume they had their own copy of EastEnders.... the fact the they didn't play it at the scheduled time would seem indicate they didn't otherwise they would... Occams Razor

Taking what Northern Ireland was doing, as has been explained, isn't as easy as you suggest. Technically it's not that difficult, but it needs to be arranged and set up.... and that's probably going to be low priority compared to what's going on in network BBC1

Finally you assume that Belfast knew right from the start of the incident exactly what they were going to do. Both them and Cardiff were almost certainly doing the same things and having the same thought processes in that 20 or so minutes they had between realising how long the breakdown was and the end of their local programmes.
Could well be that one got lucky and the other didn't

As had been said, it's all very easy suggesting what should have happened hours after the event from your bedroom

I concur with that. Also, it has been assumed that Wales and NI knew each other's schedules. In the 22 years I was directing and announcing at BBC Scotland, I never knew what the other nations were playing because there was no need to do so.
MA
Markymark
TonyCurrie posted:
lso, it has been assumed that Wales and NI knew each other's schedules. In the 22 years I was directing and announcing at BBC Scotland, I never knew what the other nations were playing because there was no need to do so.


Come on Tony, surely NI's schedule is listed in the 'Regional Variations' column of the Scotland edition of Radio Times ? Cool Wink
SW
Steve Williams
james-2001 posted:
commseng posted:

One thing that I've learned - Panorama is now made by BBC NI.
.


I think different episodes are made by different people, I'm pretty sure some episodes are made by indies.


Yes, that's right, I think - BBC NI are commissioned to make a certain number of episodes of Panorama a year, and as you say there are a number that are indie productions as well, but Panorama as a whole is still the responsibility of BBC News in London.
DW
DavidWhitfield
Interesting insight into the behind the scenes goings-on of a breakdown here by the marvellous Duncan Newmarch.



SC
Si-Co
More of a general query but inspired by last night’s events:

It was stated above that BBC Wales couldn’t show Panorama at 8.30 because they were “recording” it from the clean network feed to play back later. Is that still the standard way of timeshifting programmes in the nations/regions? What exactly is meant by “recording” in this day and age when tapes are no longer used?

Also, in theory, I assume it would have been possible for a copy of the programme to be sent to Cardiff (evidently NI had a copy of EastEnders). Can this be done on a click of the mouse (a bit like sending an email with an attachment) without the need for pre-feeding and recording/copying it in real time? Obviously, I understand that there was so much going on last night that network/playout had other priorities. But, in theory, could it have been done?
MA
Markymark
Si-Co posted:
More of a general query but inspired by last night’s events:

It was stated above that BBC Wales couldn’t show Panorama at 8.30 because they were “recording” it from the clean network feed to play back later. Is that still the standard way of timeshifting programmes in the nations/regions? What exactly is meant by “recording” in this day and age when tapes are no longer used?

Also, in theory, I assume it would have been possible for a copy of the programme to be sent to Cardiff (evidently NI had a copy of EastEnders). Can this be done on a click of the mouse (a bit like sending an email with an attachment) without the need for pre-feeding and recording/copying it in real time? Obviously, I understand that there was so much going on last night that network/playout had other priorities. But, in theory, could it have been done?


A 30 minute programme is typically a few dozen GBs file size, so assume 50 GB, that's 400Gb, so with a 1 Gb/s connection it would take 400 seconds or 6.7 minutes to transfer. 1 Gb/s is probably a bit fast to consider, if it was 100 Megs, then an hour and 7 mins to transfer, so you'd be better off playing it down the line and recording locally as video ?
Of course with the latter, you can start playing back the recording almost straight away. I don't know about doing that with the file in data form ?

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