ARCHIVE: The TV Room
BBC One Scotland reaches the end of the broadcasting day.
Video content
[00:00:00] PROGRAMME: the final seconds of the film, Just Before Dawn.
[00:00:26] GRAPHIC: weather slides summarising the forecast for tonight and tomorrow, with a more complete report provided by the announcer.
[00:00:54] CLOCK: with the appearance of the standard BBC One Scotland clock – at almost four minutes past two – it’s goodnight from BBC One Scotland.
[00:01:24] IDENT: the standard BBC One Scotland globe symbol is accompanied by the National Anthem.
After ten seconds of black and silence, test tone is faded up. The test tone here is generated by BBC Scotland.
[00:02:58] TEST SIGNAL: pulse and bar, accompanied by tone.
Our recording features over twelve minutes of pulse and bar. It may well have continued for some time beyond the end of our recording.
This is very unusual.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, pulse and bar usually appeared very briefly before the vision signal was withdrawn, triggering the overnight shutdown of the transmitter network.
It’s difficult to be definitive about the purpose of the pulse and bar airing on our recording.
If network remained on air all night – due to cold weather conditions – it’s possible that pulse and bar would’ve been radiated. But then, why did BBC Scotland bother putting out their own test tone prior to that?
It’s also possible that pulse and bar was generated by BBC Scotland as a means of keeping their transmitter network on air overnight due to cold weather (referenced in the weather forecast).
A further possibility is that this pulse and bar was generated at a main transmitter site in connection with overnight engineering work.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: BBC One Scotland clock. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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