FROM THE ARCHIVE OF: The TV Room
BBC One closes down temporarily for some overnight engineering work.
Video content
Apologies for the picture quality on this recording. The diagonal lines would suggest a transmitter fault of some sort, affecting the analogue signal. We don’t believe this was connected with the overnight engineering work.
[00:00:00] PROGRAMME: the closing seconds of an edition of Top of the Pops, featuring Craig David.
[00:00:09] PROGRAMME PROMOTION: for Beverley Hills Cop III.
The film airs on Wednesday at 9.30pm on BBC One.
[00:00:39] PROGRAMME PROMOTION: for Glasgow Kiss.
New drama for summer night, continues Tuesday at 9.30pm on BBC One.
[00:01:09] IDENT: one of the standard BBC One Northern Ireland idents – English 16 – is used to link into Pages from Ceefax.
The local announcer/director begins the mix to the dirty network feed a little early and then stalls the mix midway until the network version of the ident disappears.
The announcer tells us that BBC One will relay BBC News 24 from 4am. But for now, BBC One would be closing down for engineering work.
As you’ll see from what follows, this does not appear to be an RBS test.
[00:01:23] TELETEXT IN-VISION: a rare appearance of Pages from Ceefax on BBC One. In-vision teletext pages had more or less been banished from the channel since November 1997, when the overnight closedown was replaced by a relay of BBC News 24.
Keeping in mind that engineering work was being carried out between now and 4am, there are occasional picture/audio glitches during the next hour or so. There’s also a brief break in transmission at one point.
Although there’s a lengthy period of silence initially, music does eventually kick in.
We’ll hear the Choco Coca tape, which was first heard on BBC One on 16th August 1997. The tape would transfer to BBC Two in November. This would be its final airing on BBC One.
Music details:
[00:01:23] Silence. At [00:01:37] the picture glitch is the BBC One Northern Ireland continuity desk being taken out of circuit.
[00:10:35] Choco Coca performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:14:01] Rum Party performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:17:06] Andalusian Dawn performed by Seaview Sound. At [00:17:44] there’s a brief break in transmission. We then seem to see the output of another channel briefly (not sure what channel – it could be one of the BBC One nations).
[00:20:06] Mysterious Land performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:23:20] Bach’s Back performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:26:31] Southern Lover performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:29:42] Gulf Coast performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:33:10] Silver River performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:36:15] Athenien Riviera performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:39:32] The Magic Forest performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:43:13] Cafe Society performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:46:42] Night Patrol performed by Seaview Sound.
[00:49:55] Silence. And at [00:50:15] Pages from Ceefax is faded out. We then have black and silence for about 30 seconds.
[00:50:47] TEST CARD: at exactly 2.55am, Test Card J appears, accompanied by test tone.
At [01:00:18] it looks as though the vision signal is withdrawn. In the pre-November 1997 days, this would trigger the shutdown of the analogue transmitter network. And that seems to be what happens here. At [01:02:19], the signal is lost completely.
Our recording ran for about another hour and BBC One was still off the air by the end of that.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Pages from Ceefax. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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