TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

Although at that time it would have been Siemens or Atos who were operating TV Centre's CCA, it's never been part of BBC Resources

Of course, but the link part of it was provided by BBC Tel OBs which did get taken under BBC Resources, and then sold to SIS. Before it was all closed down, but that's another story........

The dish was mounted on the Crystal Palace transmitter mast, which was BBC Transmission, and then became CCI, and then NGW, and is now Arqiva.

What happened was explained in an article in either the BBCs end of year F1 magazine or F1 magazine itself (I can’t remember which it was).


The EBU feed had failed (or there had been some other issue with it) during qualifying the day before- I’ve a feeling it was the early part of qualifying that was missed. So for the race itself the BBC arranged their own reserve feed- I’m sure they said via Goonhilly Down. Unfortunately when the pictures went on the EBU feed their reserve feed did as well- it was a fault in the Fuji TV truck. Murray Walker and co apparently didn’t have a very good view out of the window to commentate on the start, so were very relieved when the pictures came back just in time!

Thanks for that - helps fill in the gaps in what I knew about what happened.


If anyone should care I managed to find a few posts by the DigitalSpy poster who seemed to work for ITV Sport which may shed more light. Either I found out about the ‘sat ops down linking the reserve for ITV but it wasn’t booked through to BBC 1 playout’ bit from elsewhere or I’ve misremembered it.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/24932414#Comment_24932414

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/24933945#Comment_24933945

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/24958140#Comment_24958140

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/24965072#Comment_24965072

Goonhilly is/was BT's satellite earth station. I guess the BBC's own satellite downlink capacity may have been full with the main feed and other commitments at the time?

Mention of Goonhilly reminds me of this anecdote of possibly the only time a programme has deliberately been made to fall off air due to BBC internal politics
http://wiki.tx.mb21.co.uk/index.php?title=Down_the_Tubes

The broadcasters had to use GPO / BT downlinks for many years, due to politics, so that was a tried and tested system.
I lined up many feeds from Goonhilly into London Switching Centre in the 1980s.

The rules were relaxed, and self provision of downlinks was allowed by 1996, but there weren't that many large steerable dishes available, so it is quite likely that the limited BBC TVC dishes were already committed for other services.

The ITV Regional Football website mentions that during the England vs Scotland match in 1978, ITV lost their pictures so they took the Beeb's instead for a few minutes. I can't find the quote but it said that both channels offered up their respective pictures to each other for that reason, and the Beeb deliberately didn't show any of their graphics during the period they were also on ITV.

One of the Royal weddings or funerals had a similar issue, with ITV taking BBC pictures for a few minutes.
I can't recall which one it was now!

Was. BT sold it to a company which is operating it as an earth station. BT rent back part of the site as they have a lot of fibre infrastructure there.


A few of the original dishes have gone but they bought the BBC's dishes from TV Centre when they were sold. Nice to think they've escaped grotty W12 and are in retirement by the sea


Yes or because the BBC's ones weren't able to get the signal. Maybe Goonhilly was used because the other feed was coming via the Americas rather than one hop directly from Japan to Europe?

Yep in 1989 according to this article, that was when the BBC got their first dish
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/a2cb4b43-61a4-3929-bdaf-cb24e497d9f8

I think that is when TV Centre got its own big dish. UKI-1 - which was BBC OB's mobile uplink dish (also capable of downlinks) pre-dates it I think?

1982 is the date I've seen cited for that. Gurnsey for Songs of Praise was apparently its first trip.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/a2cb4b43-61a4-3929-bdaf-cb24e497d9f8

http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1385027640/2

Last time I saw UKI-1 was in the dish farm at London 2012 where it was uplinking an SD reserve of the BBC 1 coverage. It deployed for the 2011 Royal Wedding, it was parked at Canada Gate- not quite sure what its role was there.