The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Printable Version

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Rdd - 04-09-2023

I’m not sure of the details but apparently there’s a defence to copyright infringement in Swiss law that allows a cable operator to carry any free to air channel receivable in Switzerland without permission. It’s an odd one and it must be really stretching it to apply it to UK channels.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Roger Darthwell - 04-09-2023

(04-09-2023, 02:08 PM)Rdd Wrote:  I’m not sure of the details but apparently there’s a defence to copyright infringement in Swiss law that allows a cable operator to carry any free to air channel receivable in Switzerland without permission. It’s an odd one and it must be really stretching it to apply it to UK channels.

That defense of copyright infringement does in fact exist, and it's the reason why the ORF, despite trying for years to get their TV channels off Switzerland, always failed in that endeavour.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Stooky Bill - 05-09-2023

(03-09-2023, 10:05 PM)gottago Wrote:  What’s the story behind C4 being available in Ireland? 

Talking of which, the promos for Channel 4's England qualifying matches say 'not available in Republic of Ireland'. So what do Irish viewers see when that happens. Also presumably there's nothing to stop them manually tuning a satellite receiver to one of the UK versions?

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Steve in Pudsey - 05-09-2023

Suspect that what they do counts as best efforts as far as rights holders are concerned. The number of people who would know about manual tuning is miniscule in the scheme of things.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Rdd - 06-09-2023

A holding caption with an animation is displayed while those matches are on. It could be worse I guess - most other broadcasters would give you just the infamous 04 error screen (on Sky).

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - thegeek - 07-09-2023

(27-08-2023, 09:46 PM)Neil Jones Wrote:  I've seen it before on +1 channels where the main channel has an issue of some sort (power failure is the main one), and when everything's rebooted (whether the main channel recovers on its own is another matter) its usually the +1 channel that comes back first.

And of course the whole breakdown and chaos of getting something on air again goes out all over again on said +1 channel pretty much ad-verbatim, save for maybe a bit of black where the failure was originally.

Is it the norm that if a playout system is the subject of a power failure somebody has to intervene to get it logged in or whatever to start working?  Or in theory could it just auto power on and carry on?  I presume the former is the case because of advert quota regulations and you probably wouldn't want adverts falling in the wrong clock hour...

I remember an example (maybe about 15 years ago) where UKTV's playout system fell over, and each of the channels got to the end of the clip it was playing and just... stopped. A reboot fixed it, but it meant that the same thing happened on all of the +1 channels an hour later. However they had a spare playout chain, so once things were back up and running, an enterprising PD loaded up the playlist for GOLD, shifted it by an hour, and created an emergency GOLD+1 for the MCR to switch to line.

As for how robust things are - I'm not sure what software's like these days, but in the early to mid-2000s, the automation system of choice was Omnibus, which ran on Acorn RiscPC hardware. This had the advantage that if your computer crashed, because the OS was in ROM, you could be up and running again within a minute.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - lookoutwales - 07-09-2023

(04-09-2023, 11:26 AM)Neil Jones Wrote:  What's a typical shift pattern/hours in broadcasting/continuity these days?

Lost count of the number of times I've heard one voice introducing a programme and then another voice over the credits of that programme (referring to channels that have live continuity, not somewhere like BBC Four which we know pre-records continuity)

AFAIK, ITV, STV and Channel 5’s announcers are typically live from 5pm till around midnight.

UTV operated a similar shift pattern when they still had local continuity up until playout moved from Belfast to Chiswick.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - lookoutwales - 07-09-2023

Probably been asked before on the blue place but I’m curious to learn about the old BBC DR (disaster recovery) playout setup at Pebble Mill.

From what I was aware, it could handle three TV networks if needed but was it ever pressed into use? (apart from training exercises etc.)

For what it’s worth, their current setup of dual-playout centres and the ‘buddy’ system among the Nations has proved quite effective, IMO.

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Steve in Pudsey - 07-09-2023

It did make it on air during the power cut that took the Six off air, the Dad's Army and IIRC railway documentary that went out came from there. (Although only on analogue and the digital pres areas at TVC stayed online)

Deejay explained how it all worked on the blue place https://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post671811#post-671811 

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RE: The Media Question Amnesty Thread - Stooky Bill - 07-09-2023

(07-09-2023, 09:02 PM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote:  It did make it on air during the power cut that took the Six off air, the Dad's Army and IIRC railway documentary that went out came from there. (Although only on analogue and the digital pres areas at TVC stayed online)

Deejay explained how it all worked on the blue place https://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post671811#post-671811 

Yes, that's a good description of it, fairly primitive compared with today's standards. 

It was only ever BBC1 and 2 analogue that it was intended to replace, the digital channels were seen to be dispensible in such a scenario. Although I imagine if it was in use for a while it could have been patched into digital BBC1 and 2 too

The power cut incident seemed to be just a couple of tapes being played to air rather than a full setup, it being over by the time the guys made it up from London. 

On that evening all the pres areas in TV Centre stayed powered, the switch over to the DR set up was more a precaution. IIRC it was only for about 30 - 45 mins and a lot of the country saw their regional news on BBC1 instead of it

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