Colour Bars on UTV

These colour bars appeared very briefly during "60 Minute Makeover" this afternoon on UTV. It just got me thinking, what are they actually used for? And why would they have appeared during a programme?

http://www.utvtoday.co.uk/images/bars1_small.jpg

http://www.utvtoday.co.uk/images/bars2_small.jpg

The first one looks like a phone number. Probably just a bug.

Colour bars are a test pattern used to calibrate video levels (chroma, luminence and black) an explanation here: http://videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm

As to why they appeared on air, presumably someone pressed the wrong button or a piece of equipment did something it shouldn't have. They're idented UTV Belfast so came from UTV itself

You could always ring the phone number and ask!

It's from within UTV. Most stations would have a bar generator with their contact details on it for use not only on striping tapes but testing signals around their internal circuits and on external feeds to other broadcasters.

Chances are something went faulty and it's auxillary backup source happened to be the bars. Then again it is UTV!

I know it's happened before on UTV when somethings coming off tape and when it muched it up, the machine stopped and went to the input into the VTR itself.

So no on-duty announcer or technical director to load up a back-up slide with music and assurances to viewers that...

We apologise for the loss of our programmes here at UTV, this is due to a technical problem which we are currently trying to resolve for you. In the meantime, here's some music...

(full version of the 1993 UTV jingle)

No?

There would have been someone on duty.... but then again there's no need to do any of that if the scheduled item can just be brought back on screen again

Are you sure? This is UTV we're talking about. I've heard that they often leave their pres area unattended for long periods during the day. Perhaps Peterrocket can tell us.

The same UTV bars came up on a live interview on ITV lunchtime news a while back