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The Queen's Christmas Message

Split from BBC News (UK) presentation - Reith launch onwards (December 2019)

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MA
Markymark
Steve in Pudsey posted:
It used to be the case that Radio 4 played it out at 9 or 9.30am, but that seems to have been dropped after 1997.


My memory of the 70s and 80s was that R2, R4, and the ILRs broadcast it around 9 to 10am ish. Perhaps that's what Jezza Corbyn was remembering!
MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
Stuart posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Given all of those precautions, I would not be at all amazed in ITV had their own copies and an arrangement in place such that if either broadcaster had problems they could take a feed from the other as a further back up.

Blimey, that's a lot of redundant backup to ensure the broadcast of 10 minutes that 90% of the population don't watch.

Yeah, it doesn't happen like that. I don't know what arrangements there were in the past but ITV have long run their own copy:





In fact one of the replies on that post mentions that last year was the first time the Queen's Christmas Broadcast wasn't backed up on tape:





Interesting tweets.

Rather than have 6 copies running in the same place, wouldn't it have been better for the BBC nations to have their own local copies, and one of those on a clean feed back to W12? Similarly for ITV I wonder if any of the regional companies had their own standby copies (loaded up on ACR25s 😜)?
IS
Inspector Sands
Markymark posted:

My memory of the 70s and 80s was that R2, R4, and the ILRs broadcast it around 9 to 10am ish. Perhaps that's what Jezza Corbyn was remembering!

Yes that had occurred to me when that fuss happened.


I remember getting a radio cassette recorder for Christmas one year as a kid and the first thing I heard on it when I turned it on on Xmas morning was the Queen
RK
Rkolsen
Then there was this post about ITV:





To there was this reply and my response:





I wasn’t sure if they all relied on the BBC server or if Duncan just meant it played off a server for the BBC. Also would my suggestion of the simulcast - -uplink to Satellite or BT and all take that signal - properly assure all is in sync (aside from maybe minor encoding/tx delays)?
SP
Steve in Pudsey
I'm sure Duncan would have meant just played it for the BBC.
TV
TVNewsviewer
From just watching TV, my impression was always that the producing broadcaster would broadcast the Queen's Christmas message live at 3pm and the other broadcasters would take it from off air. This was because, in the good old days when you could switch more quickly between stations on analogue, the broadcasters that weren't producing the broadcast would be running a split second behind the one that was, suggesting it was being picked up and rebroadcast by them.
PE
peterrocket Founding member
All the broadcasters would have had their own copy to play at 15:00 GMT.

Press Association were responsible for sending it to newspapers and other media outlets who wanted a copy and they sent it from 11:00 on Christmas Day with a strict embargo to 15:00.

There's also a list of 'advance countries' as they call it, or probably better known as Members of the Commonwealth who are allowed to play at it 15:00 local time, but aren't allowed to put it on any internet / multimedia platforms until 15:00 GMT.

This would have included Australia and New Zealand, who would have aired it around 04:00 GMT - 11 hours earlier than it would be shown in the UK. For this reason, they can't use clips in any local news bulletins until it's gone out in the UK.

You also can't rebroadcast, use excerpts or do anything with it 30 days after TX, unless you've the permission from Buckingham Palace.
Last edited by peterrocket on 27 December 2019 8:56pm
MA
Markymark
TVNewsviewer posted:
From just watching TV, my impression was always that the producing broadcaster would broadcast the Queen's Christmas message live at 3pm and the other broadcasters would take it from off air. This was because, in the good old days when you could switch more quickly between stations on analogue, the broadcasters that weren't producing the broadcast would be running a split second behind the one that was, suggesting it was being picked up and rebroadcast by them.


No, back in the analogue days, any such delay would have been imperceptible. The giveaway when ITV were taking a BBC derived feed was often the BBC cue dot top left (but this only happened if BBC 1 were having a live programme straight afterwards (PPB followed by the news notably). Even then, it wasn't off air, the Beeb fed Thames or LWT via a line (via the BT Tower)

If you saw a delay between the channels back in the 80s or earlier, it was a separate tape being played
IS
Inspector Sands
Rkolsen posted:

I wasn’t sure if they all relied on the BBC server or if Duncan just meant it played off a server for the BBC. Also would my suggestion of the simulcast - -uplink to Satellite or BT and all take that signal - properly assure all is in sync (aside from maybe minor encoding/tx delays)?

There is no requirement for it to be shown exactly in sync across all the stations, I don't see why there would be. Plus as you say it would never be in sync at the viewers end.


Sending it out a few days before hand and playing it out on server is far more reliable. Sending it all over the place on circuits and satellites would be totally un-necessary. There's not a lot of live TV on Christmas day and MCRs (in the British use of that term) are minimally staffed.
RI
Richard
In 1997, I turned on ITV and caught the end of it. On ITV it had “An ITN Production for ITV” endcap (it was the first ITN-produced one) but what went out on BBC1?
RK
Rkolsen
Inspector Sands posted:
Rkolsen posted:

I wasn’t sure if they all relied on the BBC server or if Duncan just meant it played off a server for the BBC. Also would my suggestion of the simulcast - -uplink to Satellite or BT and all take that signal - properly assure all is in sync (aside from maybe minor encoding/tx delays)?

There is no requirement for it to be shown exactly in sync across all the stations, I don't see why there would be. Plus as you say it would never be in sync at the viewers end.


Sending it out a few days before hand and playing it out on server is far more reliable. Sending it all over the place on circuits and satellites would be totally un-necessary. There's not a lot of live TV on Christmas day and MCRs (in the British use of that term) are minimally staffed.


Okay because one continuity announcer said for ITV said it couldn’t be a second off from the BBC.
MA
Markymark
Rkolsen posted:


Okay because one continuity announcer said for ITV said it couldn’t be a second off from the BBC.


More to do with 'station pride' than any screening directives. In fact I seem to recall ITV used to show a shorter version of the programme some years?

It was also originally produced and distributed on film, as some of the smaller commonwealth broadcasters had limited (or no) VT facilities

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