The ITV Leeds and London scenario sounds interesting - I could take a wild guess that UTV and STV would repeat programmes they have in their archives, Channel... hmmm since they heavily depend on Meridian.
The English and Welsh regions I'm guessing will be down - unless they have a region that has playout.
But since Leeds is a back up for London, I doubt that it will happen, I take it they may use some of the Northern Region's weather presenters as CA's.
With regards to the BBC power failure a few years ago this caught people out because the back up generators originally kicked in at TVC loosing the panic of falling off air. Only when the generators themselves decided to catch fire was there a problem. The generators are their primarily to keep all broadcast areas and facilities running. IIRC News 24 lost a lot lighting so took the 6 O'clock news (because it didn't used to back then) which was evidently struggling for power and it was about halfway through the 6 that it all died. Most News staff made a run for Mill Bank (Westminster) which was unaffected. Somewhere down the line TX got BBC One onto the football as scheduled (whether this was done remotely from Pebble Mill i dont know). News 24 was dead until 20.00 that evening when we got a recorded BBC World Bulletin and effectively News 24 just rebroadcast BBC World until much later in the evening. All live news programs came from Mill Bank until Breakfast the next day apart from Newsnight which came from N6 that evening as power had by then been restored in some form. It seemed to take a while to get TVC up and running fully that night as only Newsnight dare to broadcast from TVC but of course there usual studio had not been built.
In the event of a major civil emegrency, i.e NBC Disaster, would they evacuate regions of the country that would be most at risk?
Also if there
were
a NBC attatck how would the BBC deliver the news? would they do it through BBC N24 or do they have a special programme ready in case of such attack?
There was 2 sets of continuity suites at the time though, wasn't there?
BBC 1 & BBC2 Analogue & BBC 1 & BBC2 Digital.
BBC 1 Digital, as it was pre English regionalisation ISTR, broadcast UK Direct(whatever that was?), while BBC 1 Analogue managed to get regional news going early in all regions, apart from London/South East, where an episode of Dad's Army was shown, I gather TX'd from Brum(I guess Pebble Mill was able to feed Crystal Palace somehow!)
In some regions however around 655pm, it went a bit Pete Tong, as the last few minutes of Dad's Army got transmitted after the regional news, when the circuit normally falls back to London, & seeing that's what got transmitted in London that night etc etc, then they swopped to the football.
Well the circuit doesn't "fall back" to London, the region manually comes out of circuit. Dad's Army was on the network sustaining feed, courtesy of Brum, and when the regions handed back (having run out of material because they started early) they crashed into Dad's Army. This appeared in London and the South East because although Elstree was powered, its opt switch was at TVC and they couldn't get to air.
Apparently BBC South managed to fill the gap with loads of Radio Solent trailers and the like, which back then each was on a seperate tape so a pretty good effort to have managed that.
It's very possible that the football was downlinked in Birmingham, ISTR it having a slightly chaotic start but I guess that's understandable.
It's very possible that the football was downlinked in Birmingham, ISTR it having a slightly chaotic start but I guess that's understandable.
Greg Dyke has mentioned the fact he contacted ITV that evening, asking about the possibility of them showing the football should the BBC fall totally off the air. ISTR it was an England match in Euro 2000.
