So, without taking this thread off topic..
Ok, so taking this thread off topic (slightly)
"There is a satellite problem somwhere - The satellite isn't working right now.."
Thanks for the You Tube clip of Live Aid (for Africa) falling off air. I'm now facinated by the total lack of back-up.
So, I take it everything was routing from Wembley/Philly into a gallery at TVC for onward transmission to the UK (and therefore, I assume out to Eurovision), so, obviously the instruction if London fell off the air was to 'hit the US feed' and they'll fill the time - didn't quite work that way.
Wonder why the gallery didn't get a replacement VT item on sooner, rather than leaving us with the hapless Amercian stage host, having to keep the crowd placated by telling them a frankly laughable excuse?
Something like that probably wouldn't happen today
To be honest, from the point of view of the Americans, they probably did assume it was a satellite problem initially.
That said one of the You Tube clips has a US radio station's version of events, at 03:15 the feed fails, but the radio station fades up another alternative feed (I think there was a longer gap of silence that's been edited out) The US radio presenter at 03:48 informs us that the BBC are having power problems, and they will stick with the (inferior) feed.
https://youtu.be/G_O_zMzXBP0?list=RDG_O_zMzXBP0&t=186
I know someone that was involved with the Wembley OB. There were a number of less that optimum circumstances surrounding the broadcast of the event, firstly it was a production mounted by the 'Features'
dept of the Beeb, not Sports/Events, who would have had much more of a handle on making contingency and resilience plans, and secondly it was (of course) all thrown together at short notice.
I don't think the BBC (or anyone else) was the host broadcaster as such. There was a BBC feed from Wembley that was distributed internationally, and another from Philadelphia that was separately distributed internationally, and it was down to individual broadcasters to flip-flop their presentation between the two venues themselves ?
It looks as if Net 2 pres simply cut to the US feed (where the crowd had been watching the Wembley feed in their screen(s). Nothing else they could really do, as their own event pres was also being mounted from Wembley (in the stadium studio) which was also dead in the water.
Last edited by Markymark on 4 February 2018 2:46pm - 2 times in total