A question regarding breakdowns

Oh, such things have been a feature since the start of BBC regional opts, in the 70s the start of Nationwide had the same 5 to 10 second opt away for regional headlines, even though a minute of so later the regional opt proper would start. There was also a 1 minute regional trailer at 17:39, going into the national 17:40 news, usually with the local clock. All fertile territory for flashes of the 'wrong' pictures!

In 2000 they did opt out, but the actual process happened in TVC. So if that had been out of action or bypassed then they couldn't opt out. Getting a circuit from Elstree to Birmingham would be unlikely if TVC was out of action too


So they'd have probably put Midlands Today on the makeshift network at 10:30 for their bulletin as they would have had nothing else to show

An excellent post which proves what I've been trying to explain several times on here... it wasn't a magic switch that suddenly replaced the channels with backups from Brum. It took a bit of conversion and a quite a few cars going up the M40 to achieve.


Chances are that by the time it was ready to go the issue in London would have been sorted. Which was what happened in 2000.

The second line of back up was Post Production in TVC, it was only if the whole of the complex was evacuated that they'd all decamp. It was a last resort


The facilities Deejay described were readied and manned for Millennium night just in case

Would there not have been a standby against the network UK Today bulletin that they could have shown?

I think U.K. Today was only on News 24 and digital BBC One, which in those days was run separately from DNC1. There was no Pebble Mill backup for the digital versions of BBC 1 and 2 at all and Choice and Knowledge (or was it BBC 3/4 by then?) were lost.

It did air on BBC Two after the daytime updates at one point also.

By the time the 2000 power blip happened UK Today was the default on both analogue and digital. Once the older analogue TX area (the NTA) stopped being 24 hours - which was in late 1999 - the South East had to start opting out as out of hours because if the NTA wasn't on air it would have had to have been shown on digital BBC1 too.

Initially the NTA was off air normally between midnight-ish and noon-ish.

I think there was an incident where the remote controlled opt switch arrangement failed (possibly on analogue) and Elstree managed to persuade analogue NC1 to put them on air via the sustaining feed while DNC1 stayed with UK Today.

That would have been perfectly feasible as they had the ability to split analogue and digital when the two playout areas were seperate.

Once the NTA closed arrangements were made to have a way of putting different trails and film versions etc on analogue and digital via a spare TX suite. I'm not sure if it was ever used.


Before the South East had the ability to opt out there was a similar arrangement to put out regional programmes to the South East from TV Centre. The spare suite in the NTA would be put to air to Crystal Palace etc and then would play the regional programme while the network programme was coming from NC2. Wasn't used very often as far as I know, maybe only once

I think different trailers were shown, and I think two different copies of movies were sometimes broadcast 4:3 p&s on analogue, widescreen on digital? (Rather than letting an ARC sort out the analogue version)

Yes they were for years using the two playout areas: NTA and DTA. However when the NTA closed they equipped a suite that could be used to do the same.


However IIRC around the same time the BBC decided that they didn't have the need to put out different trails on the two platforms and so don't think it was ever used.


Films were often shown with two versions, the old 4:3 print on analogue and a widescreen version on digital. I do remember seeing Apollo 13 being TX'd like this, but somehow the 16:9 version showed less than the 4:3 one, as if they'd just but the top and bottom off to make it 16:9

The 4:3 version was probably open matte. The 16:9 version would have been what was used in the cinema (and likely what the director intended). Sometimes boom mics or other errors appeared in open matte home video releases or TV broadcasts.