Cursed Clocks

I've noticed that The TV Room has recently gotten alot of stuff back up in the Irish section - but by looking at some of the pages, I've seen that RTE has had quite a few problems with their station clocks over the years, specifically with the electronic variety:

From what I've read: RTE's has had situations where they have displayed the wrong time, suddenly stopped all together, have floated across the screen for some reason, and Network Two's 85-95 clock hands were not aligned properly!

From the videos I've seen - RTE's clocks were quite nice, especially the ones with the animated backgrounds, makes me wish that BBC could have used an animated background on their more modern Clocks before they got ditched... I guess the infamous "luck of the irish" doesn't work on Clocks, they've always had trouble with them. Were RTE's clock systems cursed?

On the topic of Clocks having glitches, do YOU remember any time when you've seen a station clock on TV make some sort of glitch? Stories and memories about RTE's cursed clockfaces can also be shared.

I used to live in Greece and the clocks shown on the non-state-owned channels were always inaccurate - often showing the time the programme was supposed to start - and could be anything up to twenty minutes out.

When I was at UWE Bristol, there was one night so hot none of us could get to sleep. So I switched over to S4C at closedown (this was mid-1994) and the clock started behaving very strangely; the hands blinked on and off as did other layers of the graphic. The announcer struggled to keep a straight face: "It's not my fault everything's going wrong!"

I can't believe he said that.

Sure, Clocks may be pretty - but when they mess up, it's truly hilarious!

But, except for the technical problems, RTÉ One's final clockface could actually be considered the best Clocks ever made, because of that animated background. Why didn't the BBC even try that? Just imagine what that Lambie-Nairn globe style Clock would have looked like with an animated background, that would had been awesome looking!

The hands floating across the screen before the Nine one Friday night in the 1995-1998 era led to one of the funniest RTÉ ONE continuity announcements I have ever heard : "And now as time passes by its time for the main evening news"!

I would loved to have seen all clocks from 1991 animated. In particular IMO the balloon clock and the (unused) dancers clock would have looked fabulous with some kind of animation in the background.

That said, an animated 91-7 clock would be quite easy to emulate. I'd be willing to give it a go...

If they did the Balloon clock with the animated background they ended up using on the program menus later in its lifespan, that would had been perfect!

It's fairly obvious looking back that only until a few years ago, BBC Pres was a bastion of fixed ideas which characterised it until around 2001/2002, when presentation producers started to make way for Marketing and Media Planning (then the nightmare began...) Hence why we had programme slides for so many years until they practically disappeared overnight, clocks, and festive idents which were strictly rationed to "the three Christmas days".

That, I think, would explain why no-one ever thought to animate the clocks. I don't know if the GNAT generators could handle animated backgrounds, but the balloon clock would certainly have benefitted from one. In 1991, it's unlikely anyone would have given animated clocks a second thought.

S4C had a "dragon's silk" animated background in its 1993 on-air package which would have gone nicely with the clock but was never used as such.

I am starting to have a hunch at how they did it:

1. RTE's idents at the time (much like BBC's new look) were played off Laserdisc, they first put a looping background with the nice clock markings and all that up. I am starting to think that the Clock hands, are actually an Aston type object that can be overlayed like that.