This Morning Breakdown

In the days of LNN, their links trucks were based at TLS. How much use they'd have been for doing that sort of thing I don't know, their receive point in Central London was on the LWT tower itself

They had access to the roof, so presumably they could lash up a feed into either Croydon's OB receiver or BT Tower?

Wow, Steve. That's a brilliant idea. All you need is ..... a ladder, a couple of big lads, a spare SHF link transmitter, a digital feed of the studio output available on the roof to connect to the SHF transmitter, the ability to rig a line-of-sight link, some communications kit to allow you to talk to the BT Tower while you align the circuit, a couple of spare bods atop the BT Tower to align one of their dishes, and - bingo! you're in business. How long do you think that would take, Steve?

According to somebody who was in LWT's lines dept when it happened... "within 2 hours".

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.tech.broadcast/nQ4l5xG-KOU/mNz4kxQH0GUJ

Well, a failure to turn them off. I don't remember much of it apart from being stunned to see Richard & Judy go from ultra chatty during the show to stony faced during the ad breaks barely speaking to each other.

I think I was on the NotBBC TV Forum at the time and there was an ecstatic running commentary. Of course in the days before social media, few would have picked up on it apart from uber-geeks.

A mechanical digger pulled up and broke all the BT circuits running from LWT to Tower and Tower to Crystal Palace.

That's one heck of a single point of failure! Was there no such thing as 'two diverse routes' in those days then?


I remember hearing that when ONdigital was set up they originally had both distribution paths from Marcopolo house going over Battersea Bridge. Then someone pointed out that wasn't such a great idea and one was rerouted. Actually that would probably have been around the time of the Hammersmith Bridge bombing too

I think the nearest thing to anything like that happening was the 1981 Royal Wedding. I think the SHF receive point on top of Millbank Tower that Thames were using to get the St Paul's OB 'cluster' back to Euston failed, and someone from LWT went to the top of their tower, and manually steered one of their dishes and managed to receive the signal, sending it back to Euston by line from there ?

If you draw a line between St Paul's and Millbank Tower, it does come pretty close to LWT's tower, so a plausible story. While all that was going on, Thames simply took the BBC's clean feed. (Both broadcasters had available each other's output for this sort of emergency occurrence)

Meanwhile, in other parts of the UK

http://wiki.tx.mb21.co.uk/index.php?title=Down_the_Tubes

I was just making a suggestion and wondering if a sat truck could be set up in time. To be honest I’m surprised that TLS doesn’t have uplink facilities as they rent out studios. Their website mentions fiber connectivity and satellite downlinks.

Some of the US networks have permanent fiber connectivity from their bureaus to headquarters but also have limited always on satellite backup. Maybe it’s not enough to uplink every camera or studio feed that would be available via fiber but a switched feed like the main camera or a studio output that’s switched locally.

One example of satellite backup is when Access Hollywood Live comes from the Today Show plaza in Rockefeller center. In the background you can always see a deployed NBC News satellite van (not a production truck) in the background (that’s never there during Today and isn’t a WNBC truck). That’s despite there’s numerous fiber connections between 30 Rock and the bureau and stations in Universal City.

.. and the mast at Croydon and the top of a residential tower block at Hillcrest (North London).

TLS is a television production facility and not an uplink facility and most importantly it is a standalone business unit. Yes, there is comprehensive fibre connectivity to the outside world and yes there are dishes on the podium roof to receive distant sources if required. But there would be absolutely no business case whatsoever to have any sort of uplink facility. If someone wants to have their production uplinked to somewhere else then TLS would happily send your production on its way via the fibre connectivity to wherever you like - at your expense.

Using what kit?

I thought Reigate was one of them too, although I might be getting confused as I once spent a day on one of their links vans and they had to park up on a road just off the M25 near the Reigate transmitter to accept a tape and then play it into News Exchange from there. Must have been Croydon