[Bluecortina]

Jumping on the routing issue, did every station (except Channel) have the facility to network a programme to everyone else? It appears that sometimes a programme went from the originating station to the rest of the network via THS/LWT. Did it make a difference whether or not the show was live?

I'm sure somebody will correct this, but my understanding is:

Every station had "local ends" to BT, once in BT's network it could be routed as required.

Sometimes it was convenient (and cheaper as BT charged for each switch) to have one company act as a switching point to save on switches or make things operationally more convenient when successive items came from different parts of the network. Often THS/LWT but weekday mornings would have everything going through Granada for example (the 9.25 junction would be tricky otherwise), and of course ATV/Central handled Schools and CITV.

See routinesheetsdatabase.co.uk  you'll see notes about how individual programmes were networked.

In the case of this example I can't think why Maidstone wouldn't have been direct to network (or via Southampton) rather than via LWT.

I've had a chance to look at a copy of the IBA rented circuits dated Jan 1983, so quite a bit later than the date of this fault but probably still very close.

Soton had one incoming circuit from BT Tower and on a Saturday morning that would have been tied up with the commercial exchange from LWT. 

Maidstone has two incoming circuits and one outgoing. It was an operational requirement of the ITV network that ITN could only be one switch away from being fed to the network, Maidstone had no presentation facility in 1992 so even if ITN was available to them it could not have been put to air (Studios were never required or expected to do anything like that as this was a presentation function) so much more sensible and practical to network Maidstone via LWT.