What happened: Straight after an ITV News bulletin this graphic appeared a short time later it cut to Debbie Thrower presenting Southampton's news bulletin - instead of Newbury.
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What happened: Straight after an ITV News bulletin this graphic appeared a short time later it cut to Debbie Thrower presenting Southampton's news bulletin - instead of Newbury.
That looks like the VT Clock for a Meridian News bulletin. The Clock is a countdown before the actual recording, it helps to locate the correct bit of the tape. Some programmes run their titles from a 10' (less common) or a 5' (more common) clock. Did you see the 5 top left count down to 3 and then go to black/frozen pictures for 3' (that is quite common), or did it go to 1?
As to why you got Southampton instead of Meridian - I don't know how the transmission path works for Meridian.... So I'll guess!
If they use opt-out switching like the BBC (where the Newbury studio would interrupt the feed from So'ton before it got to the transmitter) it sounds like the switch failed, or was operated late (operator error). I think this is unlikely to be how Meridian work though.
I think it is more likely that the Newbury studio output is fed back to Meridian presentation in Southampton, and all the transmitters are fed separately from there (to allow split adverts to be played out to the various Meridian sub-regions) If this is the case the presentation system probably had a fault coping with a split swicth to the three studios for the news on the different transmitter feeds.