[lhx1985]

Sounds strange for those stations to be taking IRN at those times rather than in house news teams?

Smooth Chill doesn't carry news (but does things like Rememberance Day, albeit in a very minimal form).

It could have been nothing but it's not a noise I've ever heard on there before - could be an engineer preparing something perhaps.

I'm sure in the fullness of time we'll hear raw output from IRN.

I sometimes hear those beeps on our community radio when someone's left the volume up on the news feed.

At risk of speculating it's possible that one or more radio station may have decided to urgently test their IRN feed to check it's working.  It wouldn't surprise me if a few stations revert to news feeds when the Queen eventually passes for at least a few hours.

Yes, I believe at one time the plan was that the IRN feed would produce news every 30 minutes and play chamber music between as a sustaining service for IRL stations who would be expected to suspend programming in the event of the Queen's death.

That was during the days when IRN was ITN-produced, however. No idea if that has been updated recently or at least following the award of the IRN contract to Sky News a few years ago.

If you tune in to SNR on your Sky Box you will hear the confidence tones described.