[Orry Verducci]

Surprising they don't have their own DR back up at another site but the arrangement seems to have worked pretty well last night. Presumably nowadays too - especially post-covid - their playout could probably done remotely if needed anyway.

As I mentioned in my previous post they can operate playout remotely, and do use it to allow home working.

Given STV remained on air after the evacuation it's probably a fair assumption it was put in to use.

They will have DR arrangements (presumably involving ITV) but this wasn't the sort of disaster that would require them to be brought into use. If everything's powered and working and can be used remotely then there's no need 

As I mentioned previously the DR arrangement is to put ITV1 to air. Given the appearance of ITV1 after the news it looks like they put this in action. I would suspect this was done for operational ease given that they couldn't go ahead with their planned programming.

As to why they don't have their own DR, I would hazard a guess they've done that as a cost saving. Usually this would be essential for a major broadcaster, but in STV's case it doesn't really make sense when they have ITV1 airing the same programmes most the time. So it makes sense to use ITV1 as DR rather than going to the huge expense of setting up a second playout operation.