OK. So BBC WORLD carries advertising. This is shown by the regional broadcaster of BBC WORLD. Underneath any advertising, the BBC plays out the Advert Filler - separated into 30 second segments so that broadcasters can chip in in the event of little advertising. I understand that.
But I would be grateful if you could explain to me:
• When exactly are BBC WORLD ad breaks? Presumeably at :15, but when else? Also, what happens in the event of breaking news during an ad break?
• The breakfillers themselves. I have three mp3s of the music. I am aware of the different music (coming up, news, sport, business and weather), but do these different pieces all follow a set order? Each mp3 I have runs in a different music order, so do the breakfillers alternate?
Well BBC World News has a break at 15 past, between the weather and the next scheduled programme, between the scheduled programme and the News, and of course all those documentry programme which lasts 50 mins has a break in the middle.
They were three breakfillers I think, and they all were in a set order, and they did alternate, but they've changed it now of course with these new style breakfillers which are well rubbish!
Well, BBC World ad breaks, are usually at around *.12-15 during the World News, after the World News, between *.27-30, sometimes at *.45, and at *.57-00.
Although the channel has the break filler, the channel is funded by advertising, therefore making it unavailable in the UK.
AFAIK, during a break if there was breaking news, they would either interrupt the break, or wait until the break filler has ended, and then play a network sting, if they were outside of a World News bulletin.
For the last one, I presume it depends on how much time they have. It depends on which version of the break filler is played, as to the order of the slides.
The break pattern varies hour to hour. At most there is four breaks in an hour, roughly 15, 28, 45, 57 ish. Not all news bulletins in the first half have breaks, and some programmes in the back half don't either. So it is possible only to have two breaks in an hour.
If there is breaking news during a break, then news have to wait until the break is finished.
The breakfiller used to vary the different segments, which depended on the length of the break. It used to be possible to change the breakfiller so as not to include a particular section if it was editorially incorrect.
I speak in the past tense as the breakfiller machine is out of service, and there is a pre-recorded generic breakfiller in use at the moment.
Different technology I believe.
The one they used to use was generated by a couple of laser disk players (CRVs) and a Mac produced the text which i believe got it's information from the Teletext company who has/had (dunno) the contract to produce BBC Worlds & Primes teletext service.
As far as I'm aware, the new device will be a PC running a thing called VERA, which is the same thing all Business programmes use to generate their markets board. Stored on the PC are various moving video backgrounds & creates text/graphics on the top of this from data it receives.
Blake Connolly on 12:13 pm on Jan. 6, 2002
..and I suppose this new one will have the text in Gill Sans this time.
And so the old one did come from the teletext.. that's what I always thought!
Yep, iit was generated from the BBC World teletext service (produced by Intelfax) and translated into captions by an Apple Mac
The information didn't come raw from teletext, it was specially typed up by the company and also the Journos in the World Newsroom for each page of information. Intelfax provided the data connections I believe