BBC News at Six

Yes, the ITV regional news programmes arrive at Chiswick and Leeds as remote sources, and a router salvo
(because all the opts happen at once) routes the relevant programmes to the relevant regional feeds that go off to ITV's CCM centres. As you say the local ads (that all playout from Chiswick and Leeds) are similarly routed.

I think as far as the opts in GMB go, there's a GPI or VBI ident from the GMB gallery mixer, that fires off the salvo at Chiswick and Leeds ?

Not through the gallery, but through the building (apart from Jersey - which I think has some kit in Plymouth to handle the sub-opt). These days the BBC English regions are permanently fed a feed of BBC One Network sustaining (previously they were fed the BBC One London / London and South East version) which is routed through an SDI opt-switch, and then the output of this switch is fed back to Central Coding and Mux to be compressed and encoded, and then passed on to the terrestrial transmitters, satellite uplinks and cable headends (I think). There are dual paths for the entirety of this process.


The opt-switch in each English region switches between the incoming network feed and the output of the local studio. If this switch is used to switch from network to a local studio source, then this is described as a hard (or in some cases - crash) opt. However it is often the case that the studio will itself have the incoming network feed as a source, and the opt-switch switching from network incoming to network via the local gallery is called as soft opt. (As the opt-switch happens before the junction the audience sees - which is then done purely in the gallery)

This is how things currently work. At one point the encoding for both terrestrial and satellite broadcasts took place in each regional centre, rather than centrally, which meant BBC One couldn't be statmuxed in England, and also that the full PSB1/BBC A mux passed through the regional centres. There were also all kinds of delays and tally-driven opt-switches to allow opts on both digital and analogue networks (where digital was late compared to analogue)... Luckily long gone.


ITV work by sending studio outputs to their network playout areas. Arguably this allows for greater resilience, but it does remove some independence...

Thanks. So I guess if there was something important in a region that needed to get out but not necessarily warranting live news coverage they could soft opt (as the signal passes through the center) and and overlay a ticker if need be? I'm talking about a weather crawl, school closings, AMBER Alerts (I believe they're called Child Rescue Alerts) that are commonly used here in the US. I believe I brought this up before and some one mentioned that it wasn't common in the U.K. as radio, phone alerts and text messages are the primary method of dissemination.

I imagine if ITV wanted to do it would be trickier unless there are capable facilities in Chiwick and Leeds inserting a crawl. Some hubbed or central casting models in the US sound similar to ITV and can rudimentary overlay a simple crawl with no background. To get over this they have to take the feed from the HUB, running it through their news gallery and sending back (if the transmitter is fed directly from the hub).

Sorry for getting off topic.

Yes - now analogue has been switched off this is now possible again. (The way analogue and digital opt-outs worked meant it was difficult before - as you couldn't soft-opt on digital if you were following the rules... Some regions didn't.)

However we simply don't do that kind of thing over here. Websites and local radio are the places people go for most of that type of information. Text messages to parents and email for school closures are routine now I believe.

Missing Children alerts are the one area where it could be an option - but they happen very rarely here. I believe there are procedures in place to make this happen - though only on SD outlets on BBC One in England.



Technically it might be possible, but operationally it isn't straightforward. In reality I doubt it would happen. I suspect ITV playout would be able to route a backup playout area to that region or regions to do a super should they need to.

Failed opt-out at 18:16 on Friday when watching on the News Channel. The opt is normally to the Sports Centre at BBC North.

Presumably the regional opts worked OK on BBC One.



EDIT: It's not an opt for BBC Sport is it . . . they were the network feed at that time. I should have said 'failed input'.