Networked ITV - 1990s and before...

In the days of LNN there was a thing called the BACC (Broadcast Advertising Clearing Centre) Playout. This happened a couple of times a week and it was where new adverts were played out to TV stations - not just ITV ones. I know when I used to have to deal with it (blimey, about 15 years ago!) the line was from the South Bank but they just switched between facilities houses who played the actual ads out.

I've no idea if their successor Clearcast carried this on, though I imagine that there's some sort of way of distributing via FTP or download these days

The latest info I have is from about four years ago - it appears that a half-hour afternoon slot was set aside for the four playout centres (STC, NTC, STV and UTV) to record commercials from 'SB' - whatever that is?

South Bank?

Possibly. The paperwork I've seen seems to use LNN, STC and CAR interchangeably - all referring to the feed going out of Kent House. This was 2008, before playout moved to Chiswick - it would seem odd to say 'Southern Transmission Centre records commercials from South Bank' though.

SB is Standby, which means commercials are played out on the Network feed during regional programmes. For example, from 1800 to 1830 the line normally carrying the presented network service is used to distribute commercials.

Thanks for the info. Although, on the occasion I refer to, the commercials were scheduled to be recorded at 15:00, while a programme was being fully-networked.

But I thought there wasn't a single network as such, each ITV company had several local ends to the local BT exchange that were connected up in whatever configuration was needed at a given time. So one circuit could have the network programme on it and another could have a playout from elsewhere?

Each station had at least two lines in and one out, most several more.

See also: Monday's Newcomers
http://tx.mb21.co.uk/features/slidescan/index.shtml
http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?p=3047

AIUI Monday's Newcomers was distributed directly to the transmitters from the ITCA rather than via the regional contractors and was broadcast for the benefit of the advertising industry, rather than distributing to ITV contractors.

As Tony Currie has pointed out here before, the ads were shown without freeze frames on the end during Newcomers so would have been of little use to the ITV stations.

This is my point about the 70s/80s mid-morning break in schools programmes. Why was it necessary to 'shut down the network' to distribute commercials and/or trailers? If the station had at least two lines coming in then there shouldn't have been any issue. Schools from ATV on one feed, the trailers etc on another.

I wonder if the GPO had enough spare inter-city links to effectively provide two national distribution networks to allow ITV to do this ? They had what were called 'protection circuits' that would be provided if any primary circuits (that were 'permanently' allocated for BBC1, BBC 2, ITV, or C4) failed. I suppose the extra network for ITV ad distribution was composed of those on an ad-hoc basis ?