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BBC in emergencies

(May 2008)

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DE
deejay
Oo - I'd forgotten about the food vouchers!
NG
noggin Founding member
Inspector Sands posted:

I was at TV Centre that night too, fantastic atmosphere. A nice little earner too, IIRC I got an extra £500 because I was working over midnight and got food vouchers too


I did the double - working something like 22 hours straight (two cups of coffee, one mars bar and a glass of champagne - not sure how I did it!) - which paid for a nice new 28" Sony WEGA and a DVD player. The TV is still going strong!
TJ
TedJrr
deejay posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Bvsh Hovse posted:
So it was rather unfortunate that despite all the resilience in place at Droitwich to keep the transmitter going at a time of national emergency, it got shut down for several hours last year when it flooded.


Didn't the aerial system get damaged in storms at one point (possibly the 1987 "don't worry there won't be a hurricane" incident) and they put the R4LW output on BBC1 over the testcard?


That's possible I suppose, but I hadn't heard of that happening. Presentation used to have direct feeds of the radio networks readily available but only generally used them as standbys for (for example) test match commentary should the OB fail. On the morning of the 1987 storm, Presentation was one of the few areas of TVC that remained powered. There were no programmes until a hastily converted 'Broom Cupboard' became an impromptu and very crowded Breakfast News studio. It would have been entirely possible that until that time, Presentation decided to transmit Radio4 over the testcard, but it would have been a direct feed from BH, rather than a locally recieved and rebroadcast version. Somewhere on the web there is a video clip of BBC South West opting out of the network to explain to viewers what the hell was going on.


It did, but it was way before 1987, and before breakfast TV. 1980/1? The aerial and rigging was severely damaged at Droitwich, R4 was broadcast behind a testcard certainly up to 0900, if not longer. Brian Redhead had a joke with Libby Purves about them not being in-vision..... yet........

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