ITV News - No Sound

Tonight's ITV Weekend News at 10.45pm, started without any sound.
The whole headline/titles sequence went along to its end, before switching to a hearts caption reading 'ITV News'

This was voiced by a london LWT announcer.

After 20 seconds, the programme returned, and Mary Nightingale obviously knew what was going on, and waited to start.

The first 5 seconds again, were without sound!

(Edited by Andrew at 10:47 pm on Dec. 16, 2001)

Then they cut back to the news, still with no sound, for a few seconds until the sound came back

Interestingly though, ITN must have known, as we rejoined Mary back at the start of the first story

They are bound to have an off-air monitor in the gallery, presumably someone told them over the talkback (they wouldn't have off-air sound monitoring)

Wonder what would have happened if only London had lost the sound and the rest of the country had been fine?

It always puzzles me, who knows when to do what in these situations...
How did GMG North know not to put a caption up, and their announcer apogise.
Both announcers could have spoken at once!

I think what they do now is the regions dont put up a caption because the network normally always does nowerdays. How often do you see a regional apolagy caption nowerdays, hardley ever. All you ever see is the blue hearts background with london announcers.

I'd imagine the regional centres would be sent a message telling them that the problem was at London and not their end. The message is done from London because it's easier that way.

What surprised me though was that UTV made no effort to hide those hearts -- they normally do!

If the problem is at the local end the local team do still make announcements -- I saw one a couple of months back on Tyne Tees.

In the past the caption was generated locally because ironically that was the easier option back then; with large transmission centres (as opposed to one-man bands we have now) they were on-hand the whole time, now corners are cut so its better to do things centrally.

In centres like Leeds of course all you'd see in case of problems is an ITV1 slide in any case!!

I LOVE all this theorizing over what MIGHT have happened.  I take it NONE of you have EVER worked in presentation control at an ITV station.

What ACTUALLY happened is that nets notified all locals via what's called the 'red phone'.  That can be done in seconds.

The locals then did as requested and left it to LWT (today's 'nominated contractor' ) to do the apology.

That's how the system works.

Now, who's going to make me laugh by telling me I'm talking rubbish THIS time?

(Edited by Nick Harvey at 12:16 am on Dec. 17, 2001)

Well actually Nick, one of my dad's best friends was a transmission controller at TTTV between 1985 and 1992, so although my info is vastly out of date I have seen it first hand on a few occasions. Not that I've ever actually done it, but I have seen it in action.

Fair enough Jason, sounds like you've been pretty close to the action.

Don't mind me, late at night, I just find SOME of the people here quite amusing when they ain't done it, but like to tell those that have, how to!

I don't know what the average age is on her, but let's just say I don't mind admitting I'm now taking my pension.

(Edited by Nick Harvey at 12:28 am on Dec. 17, 2001)

S'OK

Actually I've often wanted to be invited into an ITV regional transmission centre again, just to see if there is actually anything still done the same way lol...

It seems that the controller's job is a pretty lonely one these days. When I was there there was the main transmission controller, one and sometimes 2 assistants, the IV announcer and several other guys from other departments coming in for a natter every 5 minutes. It was quite bustling in fact!

ive always wondered what do they do in between announcements (obviously nowerdays, theres not many promos to be done) - do they watch the programmes - read the newspaper - fill in paperwork - create captions or....

any one know?