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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
thegeek posted:
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.

When everything was still analogue, it must have been a wee bit satisfying to look at two adjacent off-air monitors and see them showing frame-for-frame the same thing, knowing that they were coming from two independently-cued VTRs in different control rooms. The number of people who would have been able to enjoy that might even have numbered in the dozens Smile


My 1995 Sony PALplus telly had two tuners and a split screen facility, I never tried that particular experiment
GE
thegeek Founding member
Markymark posted:
thegeek posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
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.

When everything was still analogue, it must have been a wee bit satisfying to look at two adjacent off-air monitors and see them showing frame-for-frame the same thing, knowing that they were coming from two independently-cued VTRs in different control rooms. The number of people who would have been able to enjoy that might even have numbered in the dozens Smile


My 1995 Sony PALplus telly had two tuners and a split screen facility, I never tried that particular experiment

If only you also had a time machine!
MA
Markymark
thegeek posted:

If only you also had a time machine!


Indeed, though the first thing I'd actually do is travel back to 1985, and change the response I once made to a question from my next door neighbour Very Happy
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Markymark posted:
thegeek posted:

If only you also had a time machine!


Indeed, though the first thing I'd actually do is travel back to 1985, and change the response I once made to a question from my next door neighbour Very Happy


You mean it can be inserted sideways after all? Wink
BL
bluecortina
Markymark posted:
Inspector Sands posted:
Stuart posted:
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 😜)?


I never heard of a regional itv company having their own copy.
Last edited by bluecortina on 30 December 2019 9:26am
BL
bluecortina
Markymark posted:
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


Yes, BBC to LWT/THS then networked as usual.
BL
bluecortina
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.


At the ITV companies I worked at MCR was staffed as normal on public holidays, perhaps with less official overlap between shifts but otherwise ‘just another day’.
BL
bluecortina
Markymark posted:
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


Yes we got the 16mm film about a week before tx. It was accompanied by a covering letter warning against revealing its contents before the scheduled tx.
NG
noggin Founding member
thegeek posted:
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.

When everything was still analogue, it must have been a wee bit satisfying to look at two adjacent off-air monitors and see them showing frame-for-frame the same thing, knowing that they were coming from two independently-cued VTRs in different control rooms. The number of people who would have been able to enjoy that might even have numbered in the dozens Smile


Yep - most TV and Radio newsrooms usually had BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and C4 Off-air TVs (some may not have had C4 or BBC Two), plus a couple showing CEEFAX and Oracle/Teletext UK headline pages or news indexes.
HA
harshy Founding member
bluecortina posted:
Markymark posted:
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


Yes we got the 16mm film about a week before tx. It was accompanied by a covering letter warning against revealing its contents before the scheduled tx.

That’s cool in possession of material like that a week before transmission what if someone played it locally to view the contents was that possible?
NT
Night Thoughts
Fun fact: There was no broadcast in 1969 because the Queen apparently feared the family had been on TV too much already that year (Charles was invested as Prince of Wales and there had been a major BBC/ITV documentary, Royal Family, that summer).
IS
Inspector Sands
bluecortina posted:

At the ITV companies I worked at MCR was staffed as normal on public holidays, perhaps with less official overlap between shifts but otherwise ‘just another day’.

Places I've worked it's been bare minimum staffing and shorter overlaps.

I suppose the big difference then was that the for most ITV company every programme was from an outside source, whereas now excluding the news there's only one live programme on TV on Christmas Day and that's the Morning Service on BBC1.

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