Sorry to be a bit random but just watching this 'Flood' movie on ITV (I know, OTT, crap acting etc...) but it did get me thinking....
What exactly would happen to the BBC if there was an emergency such as this? Have they really got bunkers across the UK they would decamp to to keep everyone in the loop or is this all hearsay? Also would broadcasts from these evacutation points be limited to Radio or would there be some sort of TV News as well?
Not seen "Flood" but, I am guessing they would just decamp to the nearest neighbouring office and broadcast from there? I seem to remember when the BBC had power troubles at TVC some years back they did this, the news came from Westminster etc.
I think a bunker or two does exist in some form or another, together with plans for disaster recovery. If the worst came to the worst and it was a national emergency, then I am guessing that the Government would simply take over the airwaves and all programming would be suspended.
Thanks TVC for the reply. Yes Flood was a bit more dramatic, all of London under water (probably could never happen, but you can never say never) So Westminster would be a bit of a bad choice. I guess at the moment they're in a good position in London, furthest away from the Thames.
Pebble Mill in Birmingham certainly used to be the network back up if London falls off. Don't know whether The Mailbox has the same capability?! Chances of all of the BBC's London facilities failing these days is pretty remote though i guess. (Or should that be Red Bee given they handle the BBC channel distributions).
Doubt many of them (if any these days) are equipped to control the Network if London fails. Opting in and out of a network feed is totally different to distributing the core feed.
I'm fairly sure that Red Bee have a backup playout centre, but the location of this is a fairly well guarded secret, due to the security implications if they have to evacuate London after a terrorist threat.
There are also multiple physical routes to each of the main transmitters with automatic failover, as well as the rebroadcast system making the whole system pretty resiliant.
Flood
sounding promising from the trailers. What a shame it didn't live up to the hype.
There are numerous systems to ensure that emergency generators would supply power for fundamental services, that's one of the main functions of COBRA, despite what was shown in the programme.
As an aside: if I was in central London and told to get to higher ground (to avoid flood water) I would be tempted to go into one of the numerous buildings around me with more than three storeys, rather than sit in a car at ground level in a traffic jam. I'm sure even Londoners aren't as stupid as portrayed in this drama.
The rebroadcast system only works for analogue terrestrial television and there must be one transmitter being fed with something (a core television service) for the others to rebroadast in the first place. As far as I know, rebroadcast does not work for DTT and I'm pretty sure there's little support for satellite or cable should their feed of the BBC not exist. These are, in effect, third party agreements for distribution and the BBC itself hasn't been responsible for its transmission for donkeys years and not been directly responsible for the playout of its channels since Red Bee Media came into being.
That said, many many companies these days place business continuity at the heart of their emergency planning (from schools to media organisations). Red Bee certainly have plans to maintain their service to the BBC and the other media organisations for whom they provide services. Indeed, part of Red Bee's business is to specifically offer contingency planning and services to companies who already have standard broadcasting processes in place.
The bits of the BBC that could conceivably transmit a television service on their own without the network feed would be the national centres at Cardiff, Belfast and Glasgow, but even then they'd run out of programmes eventually as all of them rely on the network being there in the first place.
In times when Television Centre has been unable to provide programmes (and there really haven't been many) there has always been core television services for most of the usual BBC networks. Thinking back to the power failures in the early 00s, while BBC Choice and Knowledge took ages to resume, BBC One and Two, BBC News etc. all returned reasonably quickly. Even when Pebble Mill did provide an episode of Dad's Army as the core service for a time (2000 maybe?) , it only transmitted in the South East, because Elstree couldn't provide Newsroom South East (Elstree couldn't actually opt out at all, it only transmitted via Television Centre when everyone else had opted).
I believe the Mailbox still has some role in bringing the RedBee's backup facility into play. The BBC Comissioning website confirms that material is ingested and put onto servers at the Broadcast Centre and a Disaster Recovery centre elsewhere. There have been hints posted in some forums that it isn't too far away from the primary playout centre, which makes sense as staff from the BC would have to move to it.
The suggestion of Glasgow taking over is an interesting one given that their new building's CTA is remote controlled from London rather than by local engineers.
If things do go totally pear shaped they could probably cobble something together with contribution circuits between the studio centres and have each region opt out into that feed, to keep BBC ONE going.
In terms of Radio, I'll point you to a recent Radio 4 documentary, "Radio 10" http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20080128.shtml which explains the previous arrangements which have been declassified and hints to that there is something in place for future emergencies.
Radio is arguably easier to arrange back ups for, most stations have an arrangement where an ISDN line to the transmitter is configured to interrupt programming and go straight to air, possibly after entering a code on the DTMF tones. This means that you can get on air from any studio you can find, perhaps a neighbouring station in your group or a portakabin you keep for emergencies like BRMB have and used when Brum was evacuated a few years back. BBC Local stations often have several studio centres in their patch and might decamp to one of those rather than their neighbouring station if it had the right facilities and didn't depend on the main centre too much.
159 is the Staff Emergency Website. MyConnect allows staff to use their PCs remotely from home, on the train etc, and Gatway, as most of us know, is the BBCs internal Intranet system.
That is where the emergency information will be placed.
