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From 31 years ago today, a very unique BBC copyright disclaimer, featuring the 1987-97 BBC logo, but the year in Times New Roman.

Never seen this before or knew it existed, a special lead up to midnight on BBC Two. For the first four years, Hootenanny started at midnight, before moving to 23:55 and then from 2002 the more familiar earlier start.

Were people still complaining back then that it wasn't live?

I note there’s already one person in the comments telling us this like it’s some new piece of knowledge.

Something I've not seen before - an announcement about a 405 shutdown* (at 5:48 on this TVs closedown clip) It's very much like the ones about 30 years later for analogue shutdown.

For some reason it seems odd that TVS would be on 405 lines but if course they were for a few years



*EDIT seems this is the big 405 line shutdown. Looks like their other transmitter at Dover closed a while earlier

Not quite as sentimental as BBC1's last 405 closedown! But as you say, not as much legacy with TVS only being around for a few years at that point.

My god, that dual tone at the end is nightmarish!

At least you probably got to watch TV-am for one last time on 405 lines, assuming the switch off did occur at 9:25am.

Yes I wonder why that was. Considering the transmitters would have gone off at closedown it hardly seems worth switching the transmitters back on just for a few hours

Just thinking laterally about this. It wouldn't be because of the IBA Engineering Announcements pre-TV-am at 5.45am that morning, would it?

Were not the IBA announcements in 1985 aired at 9:15am on Channel 4? They didn't go to 5:45am until much later, probably closer to when they stopped doing them, what with the Broadcasting Act effectively transferring their powers to the new ITC?

Yes, the final IBA announcements on ITV were in May 1983 as far as I'm aware, when TV-am was extended from 9:15 to 9:25.

I presume it must have been contractural that the 405 line transmitter stayed on until 9:25.