BBC Newcastle Studios

MA

Markymark 25 January 2011 10:42am

Not sure on a date, but from the anecdote I'm basing the above on if you could find out when LO SWC closed you'd be in the right ball park. The pan-regional programme was called 'Westminster South and West'.

Apparently it wasn't long after the circuits were routed through Bristol and Plymouth and Southampton started to produce their own political programmes.

It started after the Beeb switched from using BT analogue circuits to Energis 140 Mb/s for its TV Network distribution. Energis used a fibre optic wrapped around the earth cable of the National Grid pylons. That was circa 1995 I think.

I can remember Hannington throwing a wobbly, and flipping to CP during that programme as Steve mentions.

NG

noggin Founding member 25 January 2011 5:29pm

I think most (all?) of the BBC transmitters had a VBI detection system, and there was a VBI inserter at every region, that identified the source feeding them. If the VBI wasn't detected, the transmitter went to RBS and took an alternative source. The VBI detectors could be a bit fussy...

The one at Sandy Heath didn't like some content from BBC Cambridge (and in some cases this was caused by timing stuff at BBC Norwich...) in the very early days, and decided to switch back to the Norwich dirty feed in the middle of the Cambridge opt...

MA

Markymark 25 January 2011 6:06pm

noggin posted:

I think most (all?) of the BBC transmitters had a VBI detection system, and there was a VBI inserter at every region, that identified the source feeding them. If the VBI wasn't detected, the transmitter went to RBS and took an alternative source. The VBI detectors could be a bit fussy...

Yes, my understanding is, that by the time the VBI ident signal that originated in Bristol, passed through SO, and made it to Hannington by the (at best of times) rather mucky RBL link from Rowridge, the decoder at Hannington didn't like the look of it ! Corrected AIUI by tweaking a proc-amp at SO ! Odd, because the normal path from London was just no less tortuous !

(January 2011)