Domain Name: bbc.co.uk
Registrant: British Broadcasting Corporation
Registrant's Agent: The British Broadcasting Corporation t/a BBC Technology [Tag = BBC]
There was a BBC strike in 2001, but IIRC they messed a few things about (like recording Live & Kicking and changing the lineup on grandstand), and managed to avert anything major.
Off the top of my head the main thing that could affect transmission is the fact that BBC Technology staff look after the routing of feeds through CCA... news feeds and outside broadcasts.
The effect of the disruption would depend on whether management are capable of doing that routing themselves.
I think the staff in SCAR (which deals with a lot of news feeds - often with CCA) are part of whats left of BBC News Resources (itself part of News) - though as you say CCA and Sat Ops may well be part of BBCT.
Anyone remember the ITV Strike in 1979, when the network was off the air for about 11 weeks?. Also didn't Yorkshire TV have a long strike in the 1980's?.
I've heard about 1979, but surprisingly, it's not well-documented ANYWHERE on the Internet! I'd be interested to know what happened when it went off, whilst it was off and what happened when it came back on.
TVAM had a MASSIVE strike in the 1980s which screwed an incredible amount of stuff up - management put everything on air but they weren't very good at it which resulted in many an on-screen cockup.
Do all the transmitters still have these emergency caption generators? I'd be surprised if they do as they'd look rather outdated now!
I doubt they were generated at the transmitter, especially the BBC2 one, it's too specific.
There were blue breakdown captions at transmitter sites which appeared if all else failed, but in most case probably don't exisist any more. Also remember that transmitter sites aren't manned any more and don't have control rooms.
ISTR that the during the '79 ITV strike the IBA maintained transmission and continued to charge rentals, even though there were suggestions from the ITCA (now ITVA) that this should be curtailed to save money.
The actual broadcasts consisted of the test card music tapes accompanied by the standard apology caption, slides and even a test card. These were played-out from the principal main transmitter in each region. The IBA test-card music was a selection of classical pieces that would not have been out of place in the 1990s Classic FM playlist, this went down rather well with some. I can even remember correspondence in the
Daily Torygraph
expressing gratitude to the IBA for such a wonderful service! Isn't this the period when the IBA apology caption was supposed to have trounced BBC1 in the ratings several times?
When ITV returned after the strike, it hit he air with a combined national service at early-evening news time with a special song
"Welcome home to ITV"
(Naff!). ISTR that regional companies started-up their own operations later in the evening, or the next day.
Without a doubt the best strike in TV history, just because of its simplicity - ITV was off the air entirely from August to October, with programmes being replaced by a simple white on blue caption apologising for the loss of service. The only other thing that went out that summer were IBA Engineering Announcements, which showed up on Tuesday mornings unbilled as they always had. The Beeb, of course, enjoyed complete dominance of the airwaves, with shows like Blankety Blank and To The Manor Born picking up around 15 or 20 million viewers each night. Even the funeral of Lord Mountbatten grabbed an audience of 17 million. The only ITV channel to stay on air through all this was Channel TV, who were truly stretched to breaking point with an hour of regional news each evening and a few repeats they could grab from anywhere (such as The New Avengers). Just as everyone in St. Helier was collapsing from exhaustion, the dispute finally ended at 5.45pm on 24th October and ITV returned with The Mike Sammes Singers, the news form Leonard Parkin, Quatermass and, while they finished making some new programmes, almost non-stop 3-2-1 for a week. Many would argue that ITV hasn't been anywhere near as good since. One thing's for sure - we shall surely never see the likes of it again
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Bectu has called strikes at BBC Technology on Friday and Saturday, July 30/31, and Friday and Saturday, August 13/14.
Members of the union working at BBC Technology were instructed to walk out over the four days in protest at the sale of the BBC subsidiary, which Siemens hopes to take over in September.
Around 350 of the 1400 BBC Technology staff are Bectu members.