[JAS84]

Was that caption made on a BBC Micro? The font looks like one Teletext would've used.

[Stuart]

Was that caption made on a BBC Micro? The font looks like one Teletext would've used.

I think they were produced by the transmitters themselves after the end of any signal from the broadcaster.  I doubt they looked for anythng particularly complex as a way of creating them.

IIRC that is in similar style to the one during the ITV strike in the late 1970s, which was well before any BBC Micro existed.

[Steve in Pudsey]

I think they were produced by the same device that produced the ETP-1 testcard

[Bluecortina]

IBA transmitters had ‘silence’ detectors - if they detected no audio for a period (2 minutes from memory) they would automatically transmit a locally generated apology caption. So to prevent this, as the transmission staff were putting on their hats and coats before leaving the building they would output black/bars/test card and tone to the transmitter as they rushed out to their cars.

This example from late-1981 shows the blue caption kicking in less than 30 seconds after loss of video.

www.youtube.com 

Interesting example. Again from memory the apology card would kick in for continuous loss of video too. Again I thought is was around 2 mins but your example seems to confirm it was shorter. If you were transmitting anything with a long section of black or silence you advised the transmitter in advance of the tx so that the automatic detection system could be bypassed. I vaguely recall playing out the war film ‘The Longest day’ and the opening scene consisted of a fair bit of black with the somewhat famous V for Victory sound track only (there are different opening versions of the film so don’t bother to Google). When I was showing it to Pres a short while before transmission I advised them of the long section of black and it wasn’t a fault on my vt machine!

The YouTube clip pointed to captures a somewhat infamous night at LWT transmission. The complete presentation and networking ‘desks’ failed for a period and there was frantic over-patching going on to try and keep the show on the road - networking bring a primary task. I would presume the other ITV companies taking these network transmissions would have put out local apology captions. Two completely local separate tx paths from Kent House to Crystal Palace but neither any good if the common sending point has fallen over, both the local Pres desk and network equipment shared common CDL frames and had gone faulty. Very, very cool heads prevailed.

[WillPS]

IBA transmitters had ‘silence’ detectors - if they detected no audio for a period (2 minutes from memory) they would automatically transmit a locally generated apology caption. So to prevent this, as the transmission staff were putting on their hats and coats before leaving the building they would output black/bars/test card and tone to the transmitter as they rushed out to their cars.

This example from late-1981 shows the blue caption kicking in less than 30 seconds after loss of video.

www.youtube.com 

Presumably if the transmitter was manned an on site engineer could have put the slide up before the silence detector did it automatically?

[Steve in Pudsey]

There was a Channel 4 one.

tvforum.uk 

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[nwtv2003]

I wonder if there were any cases of an ITV company forgetting to put up the test tones/card at the end of the night and triggering the caption? Would be a minor issue in the scheme of things but especially last thing at night after a works do I'd have thought it'd be an easy mistake to make.There were over 5000 such closedown a year across ITV so plenty of opportunity!

Not quite what we’re discussing, but here’s an example from 1985 after Granada closed down for the night, their own testcard/colour bars are transmitted with tone for a while before the blue caption arrives, even though there doesn’t appear to be any drop in tone. 

youtu.be 

[Si-Co]

This example from late-1981 shows the blue caption kicking in less than 30 seconds after loss of video.

www.youtube.com 

Interesting example. Again from memory the apology card would kick in for continuous loss of video too. Again I thought is was around 2 mins but your example seems to confirm it was shorter. If you were transmitting anything with a long section of black or silence you advised the transmitter in advance of the tx so that the automatic detection system could be bypassed. I vaguely recall playing out the war film ‘The Longest day’ and the opening scene consisted of a fair bit of black with the somewhat famous V for Victory sound track only (there are different opening versions of the film so don’t bother to Google). When I was showing it to Pres a short while before transmission I advised them of the long section of black and it wasn’t a fault on my vt machine!

The YouTube clip pointed to captures a somewhat infamous night at LWT transmission. The complete presentation and networking ‘desks’ failed for a period and there was frantic over-patching going on to try and keep the show on the road - networking bring a primary task. I would presume the other ITV companies taking these network transmissions would have put out local apology captions. Two completely local separate tx paths from Kent House to Crystal Palace but neither any good if the common sending point has fallen over, both the local Pres desk and network equipment shared common CDL frames and had gone faulty. Very, very cool heads prevailed.

I remember seeing that fault on Tyne Tees. They did put up their own slide (the holding slide for PYCR), and from memory they lost the sound too, or opted not to continue in sound only. They returned to the programme quite a few seconds later than LWT did, just as Bruce was saying good night. So TTT viewers had no idea if the couple had won the star prize or not. Sometimes the announcer would tell viewers the outcome of the game in a later junction - this definitely happened one Sunday teatime when TTT lost Bullseye and were unable to return to the programme.

[Larry the Loafer]

Something just came to mind. Did either BBC channel ever remind viewers to turn off their sets? If not, why was it only an ITV thing?

[Si-Co]

The VT clock seen in an earlier post on this thread reminded me : what is meant by “ident” at the 15-20 second mark? Obviously we all know what an ident (or frontcap) is, but I’m guessing it’s nothing to do with that?