[Stooky Bill]

Sounds like they were just double checking how long the actual programme material is against the paperwork. A very important check especially when a tape had come in from outside.

It's a pretty standard thing, when I worked in playout we did several checks on every single programme when it was loaded into the VT machine and one of them was checking the duration/end timecode*. That way there was no chance of an overrun or cutting the end off.

At the BBC it would just be the beginning and end, elsewhere the duration/timecode of each part would need checking


*as well as duration, video and sound were checked as well as subtitles, one issue was if the programme was one edit and the subtitles from another version then they wouldn't be in sync at the end