BBC Parliament breakdown

Don't know when the breakdown started but it was showing programmes again by 5:00ish. This is the rather unusual caption that was showing.


The random white dots aren't reflection by the way, they were part of the picture. Sorry it's only 2mp camera-phone quality.

A spot of power problems in 4 Millbank last night, I believe.
(BBC Parliament is played out by Millbank Studios there.)

The rather odd background is what the TVC weather camera looks like at night:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1412/1464315345_9c0659fd6e.jpg

This was it earlier today:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1139/1465179134_599c1d2c6c.jpg
The big grey lump on the right is the Media Centre, and the lump just beyond that at a very slight angle is the Broadcast Centre.

It must be power problems or something along those line for such a caption to come up. To my understanding, those captions are what comes up when the feed to a channel has been totally lost, the last resort in a sense.

The last time I saw text like that was on News 24 during the great power failure of June 2000.

Indeed - I believe it's the same caption generator. It's not really meant to make it on air, but has done as case of last resort.

http://www.tvradiobits.co.uk/bitsandpieces/Powercut4.jpg
[TV and Radio Bits]


I think it's also been used - on top of a live shot of Westminster - during planned overnight power work at Millbank once before.