BBC in emergencies

Indeed, The Stronghold was demolished (and AIUI it took some effort!) with the current redevelopment of BHX and BHXX.

You'll notice even in the current versions of the leaflets on what to do in an emergency (some forumers might remember the original "Protect and Survive" stuff!) that there's only mention of keeping a portable radio and batteries for hearing instructions and information on any emergency situation. Even though pocket TVs are more abundant than ever, they're still a minority product when compared to radios. It's still the case that in a civil emergency of the scale we're discussing here, radio would be maintained above all other broadcast media.

The Mailbox's role in disaster recovery is far diminished from the role played by Pebble Mill. The Mill (with a bit of notice) could mount full, manually controlled, presentation facilities for three distinct networks (BBC 1 and 2, BBC World). At one point before Studio-A was decommissioned, it was also the secondary home for BBC News (now of course, that's Millbank). Staff from Presentation in London would literally decamp up the M40, taking transmission tapes with them. While this was rehearsed frequently, as far as I know it never fully got put into action. The Mill was rigged and staffed by Presentation on the night of the infamous Year 2000 bug!

The BBC found more sophisticated (and quicker) solutions to keeping their networks on air and, as I mentioned before, it's actually Red Bee Media's job to transfer services from their main playout centre at White City.

Did the BBC bossed in London think that had the Millennium bug struck, it wouldn't have affected Birmingham, what with them not having computers north of Watford?

How did they propose to use Studio A for news when its gallery was pretending to be a continuity suite? Or was it a bit more sophistocated than that?

That could have been amusing, watching news about whatever disaster had hit London presented from whatever set happenned to be in Studio A!

National Lottery Live would seem appropriate under the circumstances

Not Millbank, Camden I think ?

I remember that, the picture quality was terrible and it looked like it was being played from a VHS, it lasted 24 hours at least until full service was resumed, all programmes were transmitted in 14:9 even on Digital. Hopefully if that was in 2008 hopefully we'd have something a little better.

I think a lot could be said for the ability to transmit something in some form as being a lot better than not being able to broadcast anything at all.

I would presume its more advanced and up to date, but the episode of The Simpsons where Krusty takes over what was then the Emergency Broadcast System in America - and that was in black and white. Better than nothing.

There's another discussion point - America has the Emergency Alert System, formally the Emergency Broadcast System whereby broadcasters have to break off transmissions and take the broadcast. Does the UK have any such similar system?

There's no system as such in the UK. The BBC used to have a system where all regions could be forced to carry the Network feed from London but it only worked for analogue services ISTR. In Radio, a system of 'Obit' alarms was in use certainly until recently (not sure if it still exists). It was relatively low tech, and relied I think on a LongWave carrier frequency to operate the beacons in newsrooms and studios. The receivers basically became obsolete, so as they failed, the system became less common. I think IRN's system was a little more sophisticated; somewhere on the net is an audio file of what IRN carried on their output before the Diana (I think) announcement, makes for interesting listening.

Now in the age of 24 hour news channels and networked news production systems, it's likely that newsrooms would find out about any impending obituary or emergency announcement through these means rather than any auxiliary emergency broadcasting system.

Not so sophisticated that they forgot to press the all important button when the Queen Mother died. The result was that most ILR stations didn't know anything about the news, and happily promoted their Saturday evening party shows before the 6 O'Clock News, going into the bulletin with their standard news jingles, only to hear the national anthem coming down the line at the top of the hour. There then followed an awful bulletin in which the petrified sounding newsreader stumbled, fluffed, shuffled papers and played just about every clip out wrong. She made Peter Sissons' breaking of the news look polished.

Incidentally if you're ever in a commercial radio station at 10:34:44 on a Tuesday morning. you may hear the Major Story Alarm being tested.

Oh, and for those interested, the BBC LR system was known as the RATS Alarm (Radio Alert Transmission System). I remember at the station I was working at around ten years ago, the receiver kept going off randomly, and usually just got switched off.

That reminds me of this...

Click

whos that?

or often referred to as 'Royal About To Snuff..."