Coronavirus - Impact on live/recorded shows

Why would they need to do such a thing? Nobody is expecting the majority of the workforce to be incapacitated at any point. Remote working, deep cleans and risk management should mean that a normal playout operation can continue. The only real risks are live programmes and those with large audiences.

I've spent the entire day updating software to make sure my day job can remotely manage and monitor our live feeds from anywhere in the world rather than just our office locations. Now, even if the entire company is quarantined, none of our customers should notice any change in our provision. It would be silly to suggest the playout companies are not making similar adjustments to reduce disruption.

I said "could take the form" The most prominent programme that would be at would be the news. Yes, of course deep cleaning and remote programming would help. But this is a rapidly developing situation. What I specified above was my interpretation of a worst case scenario.

No, you've come up with a fantasy schedule and are trying to work out scenarios where that could come true. Try working it out the other way around - what happens if everyone from the BBC is forced to work from home? What happens then? I can tell you it won't be 10 minutes of news from salford on the hour, followed by 50 minutes of random programming chosen by a computer.

Everything is run by automation and has been to varying degrees since 1995ish.


These days it's basically one computer that does everything and a director that makes changes, loads schedules and checks items.

A channel like BBC One or Two couldn't just be left to its own devices as they're reactive channels and in times like this provide a valuable public service. They'd need people looking after it, schedules change and things break

Things are a lot better in terms of resilience these days as all the vital stuff is duplicated in more than one place.

As you say the big issue is live services like news and radio. Say if half the operations department at BH got ill at the same time, or the newsroom or a local radio station. Then output will be affected and they'll have to consolidate services


I have no idea if it's set up to enable that but it is theoretically possible, after all these days in a lot of cases the thing the person is operating is just a control interface for equipment in another room or building.

Playout automation systems have long been able to be changed remotely. The night Diana died a lot of radio stations had to be dialled into from home to change the schedules, either to extend the news slots (IRN went from 2 min bulletins to 3) or to remove ads and change music.


How much you cold do though I don't know, loading and changing playlists yes, things like monitoring output, previewing and talkback would be more tricky

This is what you employ business continuity managers for. It may be that a pandemic is lower down their list of scenarios than, say, a nearby construction site digging up something the Luftwaffe left behind, but it's likely that they'll have something up their sleeves to make sure the station stays on the air. Unlike other major incidents, there's also a bit of advance notice, so time to formulate a plan.

Remote working is a lot easier these days for a lot more workers, which at least means that those left in the broadcast centres will encounter fewer people who might potentially be infectious.

I suppose it could be argued that America, being a land of various natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and the occasional "man made" large scale disaster (ie terrorism), is good at planning to keep their TV stations on the air no matter what.

Even I suspect when 9/11 was happening, some of the broadcasters in the area had transmitters of some sort on top of one of the towers, which of course became unavailable when the towers fell, but I don't know if they were main or backup transmitters for the TV and radio and whatever else.

Neil, I know WNBC, WABC, WNYW and others had to scramble to fund other transmitters after 9/11. They went to many independent stations in the New York area to find space to transmit analog signals there. It was a huge scramble.

WCBS at 9/11 was lucky that they always maintained a back up transmitter at the Empire State Building, and so were not affect by the collapse of the tower - they simply switched transmission to the Empire State Building.

Cable and Satellite users in New York would have access to the main network channels, as the network channels fed their signal to the cable and satellite operators via cable or satellite and thus avoiding over-the-air signals

WLIW - the PBS station fed NBC transmissions through its transmitter

WNET - the main PBS station relocated transmissions to the WNYE TV transmitter, a New York City Department non commercial channel

WPXN TV - the Ion owned station of New York operated a low power temporary transmitter at West Orange, New Jersey

WABC - used transmitter facilities at WHSE TV in Newark, New Jersey

WNBC TV - used transmitter facilities at WMBC TV in New Jersey along with a few other independent stations in New Jersey and New York

Here's an interesting article about the recovery of TV in New York after 9/11:
https://www.fybush.com/wtc-recovery/

Maybe not, the big difference in the US is that all their TV stations are essentially separate operations, it's a studio and transmitter and that's it. They're usually connected to a national network and often have sister stations with the same owners who can help out.

That's very different to a national network like BBC or ITV, where it's nationally co-ordinated and across several sites and with lots of resilience

And, indeed, a lot of reliance on third party providers like Red Bee and Arqiva - who may normally be contractually obliged to keep a Chinese wall between different clients' operations, but they may also be allowed to relax that in exceptional circumstances.