TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was at some point normal to run a load of adverts one after the other as opposed to splicing them together? But that (running the adverts separately) seems counter-intuitive to me. These days with automation and computers and servers, its a no brainer. 35 years ago? Mmm, I suspect I have a faux-pas recollection somewhat.

Yes I'm pretty sure that the comments on the YouTube page are largely nonsense. That funny yellow on blue C4 logo slide would surely have come from TVS's C4 pres suite.

Did TVS do split ads on C4 for different parts of the patch? Could the plan have been to have a local first half of the break then national ads to both areas? That might explain the reel change during the break, but I grant you it's clutching at straws a little.

The Channel 4 logo was definitely inserted by TVS, though I don’t know why they didn’t just cut to the Channel 4 music/caption on the sustaining feed (which we briefly hear but don’t see).

TVS did carry ads for the Channel Islands on Channel 4, though I don’t know if these appeared on all transmitters.

That's interesting, did Channel not do their own ads on C4?

As far as I’m aware, Channel received a dirty feed of Channel 4 from Stockland Hill, and later Rowridge (no surprises there) but they didn’t opt out at all at ad-break points and took the same ads as TSW/TVS. I believe, certainly in the TVS era, the C4 advertising spots were sold as “South of England and Channel Islands” - it was common to see captions such as “Not Available on the Channel Islands” on ads in the South of England.

I’m not sure if advertising was split between the South and SE transmitters, so this arrangement may have just applied to the South. It’s also possible I’m only partly correct, and there were some local ads inserted by Channel during such ad-breaks, but I don’t think so. They may not have had the facility to “opt-out” on C4.

'bluecortina' might know, but I don't think TVS operated split ads on C4, they only did that on ITV ? Also, I don't
think Channel inserted any ads on C4, they just passed through the off air feed from C4 Rowridge, and TVS paid them a percentage of the revenue (same deal as the national ads on ITV)

I don't think the C4 playout suite at TVS had any dedicated facilities to transmit captions or breakdown music. That wasn't required for breakdowns during ad breaks, because C4's Pres in London produced a 'fallback' output (as was seen regularly in some regions in the first few months of C4, because of the Equity dispute for C4 ads) and it's odd that wasn't used in the clip.

There was a major London to Southampton BT link failure in 1987 that lasted an hour. Nothing was available
from C4 London at all, and (apart from the ad breaks themselves !) there was black and silence for 20 - 30 mins, until TVS managed to cobble together an apology caption and music.

The fault could only have occurred in the TVS region, because, as we seen at the end of the clip, we crash back into the film. No holding slide for it. I'm surprised they didn't revert to the follows shortly slide that Channel 4 produced, the fallback output Markymark mentions.

It reminds me of an incident on STV in the 1990s, during It'll be alright on the night 6. At the end of the first ad break, for some reason, STV stayed with the final frame of the advert, and we only returned to the programme after about 30 seconds of part two. On that occasion, it wasn't trouble with playing out an advert, it was trouble getting back to the programme! A cock up during a cock up show!

Just looking through my (slightly out of date) list of local ends, and while newer ones tend to be related to the company in question, there's a whole bunch of four-letter ones which must be related to something in a BT circuit database, and aren't a mnemonic for anything. TGZX always flummoxes me.


Looks like, amongst other things, a reference fault - that's what would cause a picture shift and the VBI to end up in frame. It's clearly happening somewhere in the playout chain, because the DOG is in the right place.

I saw something similar on Sky Sports 1 a few months back - their simulcast of Sky Sports News was (very slowly) rolling down the screen, but the channel bug was correct. Being a helpful sort of chap (and at work at the time), I called their MCR to let them know, and was told it was fine at their end and I should check my box. Turned out it was only affecting the commercial premises (ie pub) version, and they were monitoring the consumer version.

Yes that's Sky isn't it? The newer BBC and Red Bee ones are 'JMIX' can't work that one out either.

BT Sport is BTS isn't it? Gave themselves the logical one

I wonder if the film leader was at the beginning of the advert on an ACR25 cart (i.e. the inserts were played in off cart, but had a film leader if they were transferred from film?). Could be that TVS had an ACR25 set-up and played individual ads from carts rather than comping?

Could be that, they wouldn't bother or wouldn't have the edit facilities to put on a new countdown.


Talking of adverts and local ends, one of the outgoing KRS circuits for years was fed out to virtually every TV station twice a week for something called the BACC (Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre) playout. This was how some adverts were sent out to broadcasters, in particular last minute ones and late changes.

As I understand it the various edit facilities in Soho played out the ads in turn to LWT who co-ordinated the playout and sent them out of one of their lines to everyone.

I visited TVS (to fix something) in 1987. By then the ACRs were getting long in the tooth, so the breaks for ITV were all being pre-complied onto C-Format, and played out from that. C4 was still coming off ACR-25 in 'real time', so that arrangement would have been in place in 1983 (the date of the clip)