BBC Service Information

I remember BBC Service Information from the 1970s, it appeared on BBC2 at 11:30 Wednesday mornings after Play School. Once when I was aged about 3 or 4, I remember seeing Play School end, followed by a black-on-white clock with the caption "Service Information Follows Shortly" under it. Some strange music accompanied it. A Service Information broadcast followed. These broadcasts are now known as "ghost programmes" as they weren't listed in Radio Times etc.

The tune which accompanied the clock was called "Walk and Talk" by Syd Dale. Here it is, at the website PRES HEAVEN (you will also need to click BBC followed by BBC2). N.B. This Flash animation is the 1967 style BBC2 COLOUR clock, with the caption "Service Information follows at 11:30" at the left of the frame. I wish the webmaster of that site would create a Flash reconstruction of the mid 70s Service Information clock (black on white) which I'm talking about.

Service Information broadcasts may now be a distant memory on the BBC channels, but believe it or not, the tune "Walk and Talk" still gets an airing. On the CBeebies channel tonight, around 6:50pm, they showed a trailer for the CBeebies Bedtime Hour. It was accompanied by the tune "Walk and Talk". Hearing that brought back memories of hearing that tune on BBC2 one Wednesday morning between Play School and Service Information when I myself was the intended age range for present day CBeebies.

Do you have children Tumble Tower?

No. I've said this already somewhere else on TV Forum, my reason for watching CBeebies at all was to monitor the presentation, just like other channels on Freeview. This Xmas I've also been videoing idents off the UKTV channels not available on Freeview, but which are available on Sky, you see whereas I have Freeview (Pace DTVA) in my bedroom, we have Sky downstairs.

Now let's get back to BBC Service Information please.

Service Information first appeared on BBC-2 on 23/10/67. It was broadcast Mondays to Saturdays three times a day 10.00 / 11.30 / 14.30. From 27/08/73 the times changed to 10.00 / 11.30 / 16.30. Running five days a week Mondays to Fridays. Then from 13/01/75 at 10.30 only until the final broadcast which went out on 23.12.82.
The purpose of this programme was to give engineering announcements to the television and radio trade, advising which transmitters were on reduced power or were about to be interrupted for essential maintenance work. It also gave notice of new transmitters and relay stations opening, radio shows and exhibitions of interest, plus a rundown of those "ghost programmes" i.e. the Trade Test Colour Films being shown in that day's transmission.

Do we know why Service Information ended, considering its IBA counterpart carried on until 1990?

I too would love to know why it ended on BBC2. The IBA did engineering announcements on Channel 4 in the mid eighties, but whenever a new relay opened, I think they only quoted UHF frequencies for ITV and Channel 4 / S4C.

More "Ceefax" coverage took over from Testcard transmissions around that time plus there was no need for a daily bulletin, ITA's equivalent was always weekly around 9.15am on a Tuesday morning.

I have, but it's not online, as I still haven't managed to recreate the transmitter caption that went with it very well. It's a huge tangle of lines, and I just can't seem to do it justice.

The clock and captions could be many different combinations of colours as who ever was in control that day would choose the colours themselves. It also occurs to me that the black on white example you give could just be you seeing another combination of colours on a Black and White TV. The example I have seen was Green on Magenta!

That's correct, I was watching Play School, and thus the clock before Service Information, on a dual standard 405 VHF / 625 UHF black and white TV in 625 UHF mode. Our UHF aerial at the time was aimed at Mendip transmitter.

They did, unless the BBC channels were widely spaced away, and a Wideband or Group E aerial would be needed. The BBC Service Info broadcasts were the same, they only routinely gave BBC 1/2 allocations. All rather petty really, and printed literature from both organisations always mentioned the other's channels.

The IBA broadcasts migrated to Channel 4 in 1983. Initially they were still slotted in between the end of TVam at 09:10 and the start of ITV at 09:25, but after a few weeks TV-am plugged that gap, and they were carried only on C4 after that, but with a repeat showing at 12:15hrs. When C4's breakfast programming started later in the 80s, then they moved back to 05:45hrs.
The end came in 1990, a few months ahead of the IBA being broken up to form, NTL, ITC and the RA.

OK, here's a question. Where did this image come from...

http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/identzone/bbc2/images/bbc2_service_info_clock.jpg

...and is the footage out there on the pres swapping circuit?

It does look quite clean, so I guess somebody got it from the BBC archive or a BBC programme at some point.

I've also seen a BBC1 version, same clock except it says /B/B/C/tv/ in the top left corner, and has the BBC1 COLOUR testcard caption overlayed at the bottom. When would that have been used? It would make some sort of sense to say 1969, but at that point I'm told BBC2 had a completely new clock to go with the introduction of the spinning 2 symbol. See http://www.j-one.co.uk/mulder/presheaven/BBC2%201969%20Clock.html for a recreation of this as it was described to me.

EDIT : Ah, the answer from the PPs where I saw the pic is..
"This would have actually been BBC2 being simulcasted on the new BBC1 UHF frequency as part of the final tests for UHF BBC1 colour, I'd guess the date would be sometime in October or November 1969."