BBC One Power Failure 30th June 2001 

5:53 sounds like an news report opening

Damn thanks, love the tunes.

lies

Get Reported Liar!

Likecomment Coolness He Is Clearly Lying.

@@titmouse-distribution How can you even tell lmao

I Agreed With GANG SOAK.

Even for a few secs the music stop,and the text changes...

@@BenceVass11 That "we are sorry for the break in this programme" usually indicates that output from Birmingham's control room is switched to TVC

The channel 7 and ABC outages always scared me as a child. Actually make that all of them. They were terrifying.

the bbc has so many buildings, that if one falls the others take control of the channel and just keep it on air and stuff till they hear from the im guessing head team of the bbc

Williamg209 You’re right, BBC have a back up network room in the midlands for such a reason.

id expect it to be media city or something but i guess this video was from the 2000s so maybe braodcasting house or if not maybe yeah the midlands

It was the Midlands, probably around Birmingham.

Digital Satellite actually remained functional. Digital Terrestrial, on the other hand, was blanked-out.

In a major outage such as this, how do you manage to put a breakdown slide to air whilst everything else remains kaput?

@@dal1189 There's probably a switcher or a graphics inserter upstream that is separate from all of the other systems - possibly. I used to work in TV but do not any longer (in Australia, not the UK).

@@fivequackingzephyrs I think you’re correct. I recently saw a video from inside a pres suite that was doing a regional opt out. The breakdown slide was running on a loop as a separate feed in. My guess is that’s generated on something with far quicker start up and systems requirements than the rest of the play out structure allowing this to be put to air whilst everything else falls apart.

the fact that you say someone cut the line is horrifying

@@minihoot what?

It would have been nice to hear the occasional "We apologize for the interruption in our programming. Our technical staff, which consists of interns we will not be bringing back next year, has decided to use the movie as a mock crime tape to relive some Law and Order episode. We have kicked the interns out of the controls room and are attempting to wind the film back on the reel. As soon as that is completed, we will resume the movie. Thank you for your patience."

Coincidence! The movie that was playing was Red Corner!

Fraser Currie Noi italiani ci eravamo abituati...

Its because of WTC, dust goes into the power network and broke it

@@RMSLusitania how the hell can a building destruction many thousands of kilometres away affect it?

@@scythal cuz, wind, but sometimes only And other reason is.... Since the dust/smoke while wtc is collapsing is big, a dust could make a cloud formation, then fall in the distance.

R.M.S Lusitania it’s actually very unlikely, especially as what happened with the world trade centre took place in September, this power cut happened months before

Hannah S fair enough

not for me because in the tv station i watch there are colourful pictures in the background

I’m in the U.S. Breakdowns or technical difficulties, one of our names for it, used to frighten me something wicked. Even now my normal being goes into “Red Alert! Shields Up!” mode when something goes awry. I won’t go into what I experience when there’s suddenly dead air - no audio, (TV) no video. I expect our Emergency Alert System to come on with news of the most ominous type. “We interrupt our normal program at the request of the White House to participate in the Emergency Alert System”. Pray if you have them, friends. The outlook for the immediate and long term 12:20 is decidedly somewhat less than encouraging.

tf is that supposed to mean?

i mean there was that power failiure thing last year that knocked out a bunch of channels but generally i think they have better backup systems in place now

Nah mate, it's pre-recorded

+Game Assasin Nah mate, it was live, not prerecorded.

Nah mate, how can you be so sure?

The announcer clearly said the exact situation that was going on and also what programme was on. Who would pre record that?

:I maybe you're right

Diane Butler yes

Yes

Especially the one around the 7:00 mark.

oooh... i live from the NE&C, by any chance do you have a copy of this

peel p50 Against the Clock by Murray Munro and The Hit by David Rogers and Paul Shaw are a couple. I dunno the others.

That is correct.

Murray Munro's "Against The Clock" if you didn't already know :)

Yep. That's correct

Before MediaCityUK, Birmingham must have been the other TVC.

newsround ?

Ah. I think I know what you're talking about. You're talking about the gameshow '50:50'.

The music is called 'The hit' by David Rogers and Paul Shaw.

Alex might be right, it does sound 50/50ish

If I remember correctly, this is because broadcasting was transferred to the Birmingham studios while waiting for systems at TVC to power up. At the time, the Birmingham studio could only transmit in 4:3.

Correct.

@@Electrex8 and I'm guessing the Birmingham studio had different text for the breakdown screen.

Kenneth McCrindle Possibly

Abraham Ybañez I believe that the 16:9 part is recorded from the digital feed, when the recording ended, the video switched to the analog feed which is 4:3.

Thanks, I already figured that out.

Against the clock

Their voices are quite similar, but it is Dan Austin.

First announcer *Digital* : Phil Vowels Second announcer *Analog* : Delroy Haynes

Your first announcer is Dan Austin.

The second announcer is Delroy Haynes.

Correct

+Tristans Krums Actually I think that was Dan Austin

Murray Mureno: against the clock

The Hit, its from a game show called 50:50

James Pipe wow really?

yep, thanks for letting us know.

It wasn't lmao, it was uploaded on Apr 7, 2011

Because some output facilities didn't have the capacity to broadcast in 16:9 at the time. According to the comments here the output is coming from Birmingham when it's in 4:3 full screen, with old equipment.

@SquidSurge👾 Thanks very much Squid, very helpful.

The video starts with a black screen, with occasional flickers of analogue noise, before fading on to a breakdown slide. The background is orange and yellow - alluding to the BBC One branding of the time, which featured a hot air balloon that looked like an orange and yellow globe. Black bars letterbox the slide, as it is in 16:9 aspect ratio. The slide caption reads “We apologize for the interruption and hope to restore the programme as soon as possible.” At 2:29, the screen flickers, and the aspect ratio changes to 4:3 with the same background design. The caption now reads “We are sorry for the break in this programme and are trying to correct the fault.” While the average viewer wouldn’t know it, this slight change indicates that network playout has been changed from Television Centre in London to Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham, which was designed to backup TVC in an emergency like this one. Pebble Mill was a major studio in its own right, but could only output 4:3 video to the network - ironic, as the studios were also host to the BBC’s first fully digital 16:9 studio. At 9:30, the output switches to the first 16:9 slide, meaning output has returned to Television Center, before switching back to the 4:3 slide for the rest of the video. Its unclear if the switch back was in fact a switch back to Birmingham for playout, or merely a switch within Television Center from using the 16:9 digital playout for analog playout as well before going to seperate analog/digital playout formats as was usual.

@@kilodeltaeight when the 1st breakdown slide appears it’s in 16:9 which is significant because when the image switches back to 4:3 from 16:9, in the 2nd aspect ratio switch, not only does the text change again but when red corner returns, the movie is 16:9 widescreen yet it is also cropped to 4:3 instead of it being letterboxed in a 4:3 frame, which most likely indicates that control was passed back to Birmingham while everything fell apart at TVC

Put it in tags

Or put yt:stretch=16:9 they both work just crop cuts out sometimes but stretch well basically what it says just put that in the tags and job done

Against the Clock

Martin Lawrence - Reportage

It is unknown if such a slide existed.

James Pipe why did you comment the vid title

Happy 20th Birthday!

@@rogerdarthwell5393 Thank you !

@@mariusbera76 No worries, I hope you had a good one

killer tracks.

Nope. 16:9 (London) to 4:3 (Birmingham).

Yeah. But this time it happened during a film. The film featured is 'Red Corner'.

Alexander Edoh

The Fault Slide is, but 2000 was during the BBC News. 2001 was during a film, Red Corner to be exact