BBC1 transmits a minute of ITV1

I thought this was worthy of its own thread rather than posting it in the sport thread.

At first I thought I had sat on the remote......or was going mad, but it turns out it did happen on all platforms across the UK. At about 0055 on BBC1, five minutes before the end of the new Football League Show, league 2 highlights were abruptly cut into with a scene in a female toilet. It lasted for about 45 secs and after briefly flicking channels, discovered it was the film over on ITV1.

It was certainly a spectacular cock-up - I've never witnessed a channel airing a completely different network. Has this kind of thing ever happened before? More to the point - how the hell did it happen? Oh - and no apology from the CA on BBC1 either.

More likely a transmission fault with whatever platform you were watching it on.

No - it happened on Dsat, freeview and analogue. It also happened in all regions.

According to this, the editing of the match highlights is being done by BT, at BT Tower.

It's quite likely that the highlight packages are being played down the line from the Tower into the BBC studio, and it's possible that BT managed to switch the wrong source to line - I suspect the ITV feeds from the Southern Transmission Centre still go through BT Tower.

Also, I don't think that it was in a studio at TV Centre, so there would probably have been a BT circuit from the studio back to the Broadcast Centre which could have been wrongly switched.

This sort of happened before in TVC with Esther Rantzen on Loose Women appearing on Shaw's screen on Working Lunch last year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMRzSKTSlrw

That doesn't sound correct, since when have BT had post production facilities? It's more likely that the pictures go from the grounds to IMG via the BT Tower and edited there. If it happened at BT then it would be when/if the programme was going to air from IMG via them

Yep Famously, one of the RTL channels went out on LWT once:
*WARNING CLIP NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZnhjiEDZ0g

And I once saw one of the UKTV channels go out on BBC2



There's many ways it can happen, as Steve explained above and as happened on the Working Lunch/Loose Women incident, it's fairly likely if the line coming into the studio/playout centre gets switched while it's on air - although of course it could be any feed going through the place the switch takes place or more likely - colour bars or some sort of caption.

It probably doesn't happen as much these days but it has been known for another channel to be cut to air because someone is watching it in the transmission area or master control room (MCR) and it's accidently been put to air



I don't think they've been live that time of night (at least not regularly) for many years

Since whenever this case study [pdf] was written?

For the Football League show, match highlights are played into BT Tower, where CSI Sports edit them down - then the programme is produced by IMG Mediahouse in Chiswick. This then makes it to the BBC by way of BT Tower, much in the same way as many other outside broadcasts.

Thanks for that, I had no idea that they'd even contemplate getting into that sort of thing.



Yeah, so any switch of feed would have been when the programme was played out from Chiswick via BT

I've seen North West Tonight opt onto BBC One Midlands once.

I've also seen BBC News at One on Alibi. Interrupting The Bill - The Swines.

Interesting - BBC Midlands appearing in the North West is considerably easier to explain how it might have happenned - Winter Hill losing its connection to Oxford Road and going into RBS mode - than North West appearing in the Midlands..

BT had ideas that it would enhance value if they 'stored' material for broadcasters. The idea being that incoming feeds (either via Satellite, Eurovision or Broadband) would be buffered at BTT and then grabbed by the broadcaster or production house from the BT store as required. The exercise was to enable producers of programmes such as TWI's Transworld Sport to gather material without having to maintain staffed facilities as it came in. The problem with this system for 'live' broadcasters is that of course not all material now comes via BT Tower so it adds a level of complexity to their operations.

Whether the system has earned additional revenue for BT, I wonder. This new contract certainly seems to indicate that they are persuing the venture.