BBC1 Fault 1991 (TV-Ark)

http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/mistakes/bbc.html

Just been looking at the BBC1 Late Film Fault clip (1991). They couldn't show Heaven Can Wait instead they showed a short film Timescape. What happened after that? Did they show any another fillers?

Maybe it was deliberate, so they could go home and have an early night!

A tad unrelated, but what would have to happen to render a programme or film completely unplayable after a technical fault? I know there was a more recent one (early 00s, maybe?) when BBC One couldn't join the BBC News, but surely all faults are rectifiable. Is it more a case of how long it'd take?

I recall an edition of Spike Milligan's 'There's a Lot of it About' falling off the air mid programme one evening in 1985. The VT just went to noise. After a caption and music for a few minutes, the programme started again, about a minute back from the point it had failed, only to fail again at the exact same point. There was another few mins of apology card etc, and a repeat performance of the failure. After that the CA said; 'Well, just goes to show, there really is a lot of it about, but we're going to have to give up on it'. There was a trailer, and the next scheduled prog started a min or so early.

Don't know what the problem was, probably a damaged tape with an edit point that had failed/degraded. Dicey stuff 2 inch Quad !

It all depends on the circumstances of the fault.

If a live programme fails to make it to air, there is a nominated back up programme which can be played out instead.

If a live programme falls off air then it's apology caption and music while the situation is assessed and an estimate is made for how long it will take to fix or work around the fault. They might play a generic filler such as Coast ( or at least attempt to) or a longer form stand by. There have been exceptions to this, particularly for sport - during Euro 2008 a match fell off air due to power failure at the International Broadcast Centre in a thunderstorm. BBC1 put up their apology caption with the radio commentary. When golf coverage was interrupted by power problems they bizarrely joined the News Channel.

For standard recorded programmes there shouldn't be much chance of problems these days, everything has a redundant back up, including a completely separate pres facility at a "secret location" which has copies of all the programmes and is usually staffed. It's not like the days when there was one tape and if that got chewed up you were stuffed. It should be possible to recover from any interruption reasonably quickly I would imagine.

For some topical programmes they might be played out from the edit suite if edited close to transmission time. With these there will be a nominated standby as per live programmes.

I remember a comment from last year(I think?) where someone said that Christmas TOTP was a 'late delivery' programme.

What is/was the back up for Christmas TOTP?

(I'm guessing if HIGNFY is also a 'late delivery' programme, it's either transmitted from the edit suite or an old edition is shown if desparate!)

Did it eventually get retransmitted ok?
(Bearing in mind Milligan (& Marty Feldman too, come to think of it !) repeat transmissions are rarer than rocking **** thesedays!)

I don't recall it did, though it was a repeat anyway from 1982

http://www.tv.com/shows/theres-a-lot-of-it-about/

Which means it must have been originally made on C Format 1 inch tape, which wasn't to my knowledge ever physically edited (unlike Quad), so the mystery remains as to exactly what the catastrophic fault was ?

Yes, I'm not sure if it's still the case but what they used to do was edit it in a post production facility with outgoing lines. A copy of the finished programme would be taken by taxi to TV Centre and there was another copy waiting in at the suite to play down the line should they not make it.

I'd assume an old edition would be shown if such an event occurred. I'm only guessing after Clarkson-gate and they pulled an episode of HIGNFY with him in it and, IIRC, they showed an older version.

That was QI wasn't it?

I stand corrected.