A question regarding breakdowns

IIRC BBC South East were at Elstree at that point, but to opt out they remotely operated equipment at TV Centre which wasn't available due to the power cut.

Many thanks for clearing that up. Perhaps I was wrong to say South East was the default region by then. Certainly in the 1980s and early 1990s it was.

No, on the breakdown mentioned Dads Army was definately run from Pebble Mill Comms Centre.
The engineer who grabbed the tape from the cupboard I can name (but won't here).
He only pressed play when he suddenly saw his own output coming back up the network feed as it was switched.
Birmingham was the standby at that time.

The preferred order of things at various times would include after CAR, SCAR then Lime Grove then LBH. But obviously if all of TC was out of action, so was SCAR. Lime Grove was demolished and all BH could do was hold network with test signals.
So Birmingham was the next site that had facilities, basic though they were at short notice.

I think once Digital BBC One had launched UK Today became the sustaining feed. That failed to make it on air during the power cut, a UK Direct was the standby - a repeat of a regional documentary.

Actually, by 2000 even BH wasn't staffed for tv as the area had been remotely controlled by CAR and was closed by then.
Radio staff could have helped but that would have taken time, and it was possible they were busy as various radio lines may have passed through TC.
Not worth it just to put out test signals.

I should have remembered that, as my post was one of those closed at the time!

In the 2000 breakdown, given the 6 o clock news went off air, and thus finished early, and the regional programmes finished early, could Birmingham have tried to fill in time with a BBC News slide, and the announcer reading national news headlines to fill time? Also, who was the continuity announcer on standby in Birmingham that evening?

Birmingham were playing out Dad's Army, but the following junction is a good question. ISTR they went to the football early although it was just a beauty shot.

In fact, I think the football was a pretty big (England?) match in Euro 2000, and Greg Dyke had been talking to ITV about them showing it if BBC One was unable to.

There wouldn't be a standby announcer shift in Birmingham for this unlikely eventuality.
It would probably be the usual regional voice over before Midlands Today.
It was just an engineer throwing a tape on a machine that was there at short notice as it was an area that was constantly staffed during broadcast hours.

Towards the bottom of this link, are the two test cards transmitted from Birmingham, in 1997, during a switching test, when both BBC1 and 2 were off air.

http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/testcard/bbc_test.html

I actually saw them at the time. I should have been in bed, but sneaked up. And I caught them on video.

Yes as I said a few pages back, there was nothing on standby, just some tapes. Once some staff from TVC got there with the TX tapes they could use some edit suites to run a basic service.

I think the pres for that match was from on site in The Netherlands. I wondered at the time whether BH could have overpatched the feed directly to CP and Net 1 distribution?