Dick and Dom on Radio 1

Which lasts about 10 seconds before they chicken out and cough or something so the silence detector doesn't take over Radio 1.

The emergency back-up can be fired from the studio - for fire alarms etc, but there is also the silence detector which kicks in after a certain time. As has already been pointed out when there is a "silence" on purpose - like Remembrance Day the atmos is made a lot louder or the network asks for the silence detector to be turned off.
And the feeds are routed in various way so that all the networks have ways of getting on air from different locations if needed. I can't go into detail about them.

Well OBVIOUSLY there is a timer - it doesn't just come on every two seconds when there is the slightest amount of silence. Imagine that.

Also, a question - is there a sort of similar system in place for TV? Blank screen with silence for example?

There certainly used to be, BBC networks would hand over to Pebble Mill in Birmingham - this is what happenned during the power cut in which the Six o'clock News fell off the air, and Dad's Army and a Michael Palin programme were played out from Brum.

Now that Pebble Mill is no more - and now that RedBee is a different company to the BBC - there are facilities available elsewhere, the exact location is secret for obvious reasons although over the years enough hints have been made in various places by various people that it's possible to have an educated guess.

The existence of this backup facility is confirmed here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/questions/whodoeswhat.shtml

ITV can run everything from Leeds rather than London if necessary. Channel 4 has a facility at Millbank which it used a few years ago when Horseferry Road was evacuated due to a gas leak.

Cheers.

Oops wrong thread!

I presume they are using an Emergency CD now as opposed to an Emergency tape, as it stops DJs like Nicky Campbell from recording over it.

Simon Mayo's show once fell off air, and instead of what was supposed to be on the Emergency DAT, we got a few mins of an old Nicky Campbell show instead.

Y'what? I never heard about this

I wonder if Channel 4 have reviewed there backup arrangements considering the London bombings, it seems to me strange to have the backup site to be so close.

With regards to the BBC is there a reason why BBC Scotland wasn't used, surely they would have required copies of all output due to the increased level of regional scheduling they have.

Anyone know what Five have as a backup? Just dive off air, who would notice after all.

Actually, they tried for fifteen.

The timer setings are diffrent for each of the stations - Radios 3 and 4 have a lot longer time-outs than Radio 1. Radio 3 has periods of silence as part of it's music and Radio 4 don't want the tape kicking in during a sensitive monent during a drama