Broadcasting 101

Correct. The only normal hard breaks are the xx:57 TOTH break and the breaks before the back half-hour press preview / Sophy Ridge replays overnight.

Ahh yes, I suppose the TC would have to be watching out for each region to come to their break and then cue them out of it.... and if every region had a break they'd be doing several at the same time

Yes, the other way would be for the breaks to be recorded earlier 'down the line' and played out locally as simply events in the programmes' running order. I think in the 90s Meridian Newbury did that, because their breaks were normally at a different time to Southampton's breaks ?

As an aside, in Southern’s day the commercials into the Dover news programmes were played out live from telecine direct to Dover. You had to man the machine and have your ear jammed up against a 3” speaker carrying telephone quality talkback from the Dover control room. There was no reverse talkback to Dover. Not for the faint hearted.

Were you able to see Dover's output in Southampton. Even an off air feed from Heathfield would have been more or less impossible ?

Telecine 2 > Dover
Dover studio output > Southampton Pres
Southampton Pres > Dover Transmitter

So Dover’s output always went via the Southampton Pres area.

Ah, so not flying completely blind thankfully!

That begs the question why the ads went via Dover rather than being cut to air via Pres?

My reaction is that the wanted Dover to control when they came .. as soft break .... but I don't know ....

You were because you didn't know when the break was going to be. You had to strain your ears to the lo-fi talkback and try and identify the director saying 'standby Southampton telecine' at some point. On hearing that you whacked the video level control up and down quickly to signal to him that you had heard him. Southampton MCR were listening across the talkback too and if they heard the Dover director and you didn't respond they would literally fly out of MCR and ask if you had heard the cue.

On occasion they would come out and say did you hear the cue to which you'd respond 'No, I didn't, I don't think that was a cue'. Then there'd be a concerned few seconds as to whether it was a cue or not. Remember all you could hear on that lo-fi talkback was the director and PA, programme sound spilling all over it and amongst all that lot you were straning to hear 'roll Southampton telecine' - once you'd rolled it there was no going back, you could not re-cue.

Alluding to previous comments - because the Southampton Pres control room were watching and listening for the local Southampton newsroom to go to a break - they couldn't listen to both with any degree of confidence.

For something that was so important as the adverts, why on earth could a larger speaker be provided for the talkback?
Even at the reduced bandwidth it would help - or even get keyed talkback rather than open.

It sounds like something that wasn't very good was used despite it being known as poor for years!