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Cock-up on BBC ONE earlier

(July 2006)

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GE
thegeek Founding member
deejay posted:
Truly abysmal. Even if the automation is throwing it's rattle well out of the pram, it's usually possible to cut the junction down to the bare minimum and get into the next programme manually (or in this case Weatherview or whatever it's called these days). Mind you, with fewer people involved these days it's sometimes a matter of what can be achieved while fighting a computer! I notice there wasn't even a hint of a live announcer. Presumably there wasn't one to fill over a menu while the director got Weatherview in the gate.
Fewer people involved? There's a director dedicated to BBC One, and a room of directors down the corridor, just as there would be during the day. The only difference is that there's no live announcer, but how often is there a need for one at that time of night?

It looks to me like the vision mixer crashed. It could happen any time, and yes, there are ways around it (such as the emergency cut button). But if you're in the middle of a junction and not entirely sure how your equipment's broken, it can be hard to know how to react.

Besides, it's only television, nobody died.
:-(
A former member
Is the money saved on a live announcer really worth it when things like this are the result? Especially given the ridiculous sums lavished on the celebrities.

(Longs for the days when they'd just stick the in-vision announcer on with a copy of the TV Times and let him cover up the cracks while the TX gallery goes into meltdown Very Happy )

This sort of thing isn't uncommon really. UTV seems particularly afflicted with errors like this. It's when you get the real howlers like starting up The Bill at 7.45 instead of the second half of a regional programme that it's time to cry in a corner. If only I'd had TiVo back then!
GA
Gareth Founding member
jason posted:
Is the money saved on a live announcer really worth it when things like this are the result? Especially given the ridiculous sums lavished on the celebrities.

(Longs for the days when they'd just stick the in-vision announcer on with a copy of the TV Times and let him cover up the cracks while the TX gallery goes into meltdown Very Happy )


Having a live announcer in or out of vision wouldn't really help matters really, if you can cut a live announcer to air you might as well cut a recorded one. The issue here is that the equipment was doing what it wanted to do and the director was trying to get it back to what he wanted it to do.

The same problem would be there whether there was a live announcer or not!
ST
Stuart
Thanx for that clip Paul, it certainly was funny to watch. I suppose it's one of the many drawbacks of increasing computer control, but at least it was in the wee small hours of the morning, so not many people will have seen it.

At least it was only a couple of minutes of cock-ups, unlike C4 the other week happily carrying on broadcasting the 2nd half of the wrong episode of Hollyoaks (causing alot of deja-vu in this house I can tell you) Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing
:-(
A former member
Gareth posted:
jason posted:
Is the money saved on a live announcer really worth it when things like this are the result? Especially given the ridiculous sums lavished on the celebrities.

(Longs for the days when they'd just stick the in-vision announcer on with a copy of the TV Times and let him cover up the cracks while the TX gallery goes into meltdown Very Happy )


Having a live announcer in or out of vision wouldn't really help matters really, if you can cut a live announcer to air you might as well cut a recorded one. The issue here is that the equipment was doing what it wanted to do and the director was trying to get it back to what he wanted it to do.

The same problem would be there whether there was a live announcer or not!


Yeah but the system will have a manual override though, just to cut to another source. A recorded source would need setting up, which is more difficult than just cutting the live anno and letting him deal with it, which is surely the reason why these events invariably end up looking incompetent, because any modifications to the programming of the equipment ends up going out live because there is no easy way out that looks professional.
TV
tvarksouthwest
Gareth posted:
Having a live announcer in or out of vision wouldn't really help matters really, if you can cut a live announcer to air you might as well cut a recorded one.

But a recorded anno can't keep viewers informed, especially if the problem is a complicated one. Can you imagine how things would have looked if there had been no live announcers during the power failures of 2000 and 2001?

Overnights on BBC1 and BBC2 are no longer just a simple handover to News 24. Announcements are required for most of the small hours on both channels. The Learning Zone particularly is often vulnerable to problems. If there's a full team of directors on the night shift, why not two announcers?
PC
Paul Clark
Perhaps not a cock-up, but why was the whole of Bollywood shown just now, with only a simple "This is BBC ONE" from Dean? It also cut off rather abruptly at the end.

last frames:
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/bbconebollywood_4thjul_end1.jpg
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/bbconebollywood_4thjul_end2.jpg

and a second or two of black before the film started.
DE
deejay
tvarksouthwest posted:
Gareth posted:
Having a live announcer in or out of vision wouldn't really help matters really, if you can cut a live announcer to air you might as well cut a recorded one.

But a recorded anno can't keep viewers informed, especially if the problem is a complicated one. Can you imagine how things would have looked if there had been no live announcers during the power failures of 2000 and 2001?

Overnights on BBC1 and BBC2 are no longer just a simple handover to News 24. Announcements are required for most of the small hours on both channels. The Learning Zone particularly is often vulnerable to problems. If there's a full team of directors on the night shift, why not two announcers?


Having a live announcer would help, no question. The last thing the director wants to do in a breakdown is find a suitable recorded announcement, cue it up and play it to air - it just isn't a priority - settling the vision mixer is the priority and holding an item on the air! And if you have to run a network manually for a bit, a live announcer is darn handy - as it's one less thing to worry about.

Far better for the director to get a suitable image on the telly (a menu being ideal) and asking the announcer to fill for a few moments while s/he gets the next programme cued up.

And when I said fewer people, I meant that even only a couple of years ago there will have been dedicated VT operators per channel as well as a director, an announcer and an engineer. And just over a decade ago there was a full gallery of staff per channel. Breakdowns this catastrophic didn't happen. OK, there were cock ups, but I don't recall streams of trails starting, cutting off, frozen frames etc being cut to air one after another before "automation" !
IS
Inspector Sands
deejay posted:
And when I said fewer people, I meant that even only a couple of years ago there will have been dedicated VT operators per channel as well as a director, an announcer and an engineer. And just over a decade ago there was a full gallery of staff per channel. Breakdowns this catastrophic didn't happen. OK, there were cock ups, but I don't recall streams of trails starting, cutting off, frozen frames etc being cut to air one after another before "automation" !


But try operating a channel these days with a gallery full of people replacing the computer. Not only would it be very costly, and you'd need more people than 10 years ago due to TV being more complex.... but it also arguably wouldn't be as good a final product.

Just look at how much faster and slicker TV presentation is now compared with when it was all run manually, and add in the factor of everything that now goes with a TV channel such as widescreen switching, AD, Interactive applications etc. It goes wrong occasionally, but it is on the whole better
DE
deejay
Inspector Sands posted:
deejay posted:
And when I said fewer people, I meant that even only a couple of years ago there will have been dedicated VT operators per channel as well as a director, an announcer and an engineer. And just over a decade ago there was a full gallery of staff per channel. Breakdowns this catastrophic didn't happen. OK, there were cock ups, but I don't recall streams of trails starting, cutting off, frozen frames etc being cut to air one after another before "automation" !


But try operating a channel these days with a gallery full of people replacing the computer. Not only would it be very costly, and you'd need more people than 10 years ago due to TV being more complex.... but it also arguably wouldn't be as good a final product.

Just look at how much faster and slicker TV presentation is now compared with when it was all run manually, and add in the factor of everything that now goes with a TV channel such as widescreen switching, AD, Interactive applications etc. It goes wrong occasionally, but it is on the whole better


Absolutely - I agree with you. All I'm saying is that with channels being run in the complex way they are these days, when things go wrong with the automation the results can be extremely chaotic. And when the automation decides to simulate a cat walking across the vision mixer (an excellent analogy earlier in the thread btw!) having only one pair of hands to try and save the day is a distinct disadvantage!!!
GE
thegeek Founding member
jason posted:
Is the money saved on a live announcer really worth it when things like this are the result? Especially given the ridiculous sums lavished on the celebrities.
Of course, you have to remember that the amounts of cash that the BBC lavishes on Jonathan Ross doesn't really bear any relation to the money available for presentation.
Red Bee have shareholders to please, now. They can't really justify a whole gallery per channel, with live announcers round the clock - in the unlikely event that a channel falls off air when there's hardly anyone watching. They've got service level agreements with their customers, and they'll meet them, but not necessarily go out of their way to exceed them if it'll have the Aussie bankers looking impatiently at their wallets.
GE
thegeek Founding member
deejay posted:
Absolutely - I agree with you. All I'm saying is that with channels being run in the complex way they are these days, when things go wrong with the automation the results can be extremely chaotic. And when the automation decides to simulate a cat walking across the vision mixer (an excellent analogy earlier in the thread btw!) having only one pair of hands to try and save the day is a distinct disadvantage!!!
Another thing to bear in mind is that the BBC channels tend to get a director each - UKTV has two or three taking care of all their channels.

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