[James2001]

Though watching the videos that have in the past been posted of Channel 4 at midnight (they had a Big Breakfast special), there doesn't seem to be any sort of glitch or anything to suggest them switching over to a new system- maybe they did that during the closedown to avoid potentially affecting programmes?

ETP1 also vanished from Channel 4 at the same time, I assume that was down to the changes as well, and so did 4-Tel On View on view for 6 months, so closedown was just a caption stating when the first programme was starting until 4 Tel On View returned in July 93 (though I recently saw an example of the same caption from some time in 1994 as well- and it must be from 1994 at least as the closedown had the new design of clock that came in that year).

[Stooky Bill]

Meridian launched it's local news service from Maidstone Studios, Southampton Studios and the new Newbury Studios. Dover wasn't involved as a base. Later the Maidstone Studios service was moved to the new New Hythe centre for a decade or so and then back again.

I was talking about TVS's launch. Maidstone wasn't ready for launch so their South East News came from Southerns studio in Dover. On videos of the end of Southern and the start of TVS you can see that they were still using the studio right up to 31/12/81 and it appeared with its new set the next day.

There's a shot of the building on the last Day by Day and it looks tiny,

[Stooky Bill]

Though watching the videos that have in the past been posted of Channel 4 at midnight (they had a Big Breakfast special), there doesn't seem to be any sort of glitch or anything to suggest them switching over to a new system- maybe they did that during the closedown to avoid potentially affecting programmes?

ETP1 also vanished from Channel 4 at the same time, I assume that was down to the changes as well, and so did 4-Tel On View on view for 6 months, so closedown was just a caption stating when the first programme was starting until 4 Tel On View returned in July 93 (though I recently saw an example of the same caption from some time in 1994 as well- and it must be from 1994 at least as the closedown had the new design of clock that came in that year).

I was watching Channel 4 that night and there was a lot of visual disturbance around midnight. But then I was watching in London so even if it was done after closedown there was still a lot of switching going on because of the changes to ITV.

I was keeping half an eye on teletext and there was a glitch to the vision slightly after midnight that coincided with that appearing. That was added at transmitters themselves so would vary depending on where you were

[James2001]

Yeah, I've just found a video of it, there is a bit of disturbance at the 29 minute mark- though interestingly this is around a minute or so before Big Ben strikes midnight (which Uri Geller completely failed to stop)

www.youtube.com 

[Bluecortina]

Thanks got that. So what happened in Dover? Presumably they didn't have two studios?

I'm afraid my source was not there at that time. There is a Southern/TVS/Meridian facebook page you can easily join and ask your questions - they are plenty of people on that site who will know the answers.

[Bluecortina]

I seem to recall LNN TX was shadowing ITV for weeks before going on-air. The stability of the commercial LMS system was hugely important to Carlton/LWT and eventually was running at 99.9% performance.
LNN News did a far bit of shadowing but not everyday and often bulletins on some days and hour long shows another. The first few days of 1993 LNN actually transmitted LWT News branded bulletins. The launch of London Tonight brand was saved until Monday January 4th.
GMTV did a neat thing with distribution to the regions having "PresFax" type running orders showing timings to opt-out from NewsStar, but also Talkback in NICAM so the regions could all hear the St5 production talkback about late changes.

Just to add a little bit more. The original post 1993 tx suite was designed to be used by two companies and when a third was added out of necessity (GMTV) it became a bit of a headache. The 3 companies used different software packages to integrate their ad sales into some sort transmittable file solution into the LMS systems and their surrounding ingest machines. A third party software integrator company (Ken Louth) was taken on board to design and implement a solution. It wasn't easy at all and there were late/over night telephone conference calls between London (TLS/LNN) and the US (Louth) to iron out all the glitches. They got there in the end but I believe it was not easy. Just to add, GMTV's talkback was distributed in the teletext rather than Nicam and was affectionately known as Tit (Talkback in telextext). I can't remember which line it was added to. The regional opt out switching was added to another line.

[Neil Jones]

Pretty sure I posted this before, but its related to the discussion.

Oracle also lost their licence at the end of 1992, to be replaced by Teletext Ltd. It was ironic as originally there wasn't to be a teletext service after 1992, but Oracle fought for the right to bid for it, and then lost the licence anyway.

The Teletext Archaeologist on YouTube received a tape from Kaleidoscope a couple of years ago recorded on New Year's Eve 1992 and was able to extract the data to show Oracle's infamous "little white dot" close-out, and then the whole handover to Teletext which as it turned which didn't happen instantly:

www.youtube.com 

[Spencer]

Pretty sure I posted this before, but its related to the discussion.

Oracle also lost their licence at the end of 1992, to be replaced by Teletext Ltd. It was ironic as originally there wasn't to be a teletext service after 1992, but Oracle fought for the right to bid for it, and then lost the licence anyway.

Why wasn’t there going to be a teletext service after 1992? I’d have thought around that time, teletext would have been at the height of its popularity, with any notion of digital services to replace it still years away. It seems like an odd plan. Or were they going to use the bandwidth for something else?

[nwtv2003]

The government wanted to auction off the teletext spectrum to private companies within sectors such as banking. Oracle successfully campaigned to change the government’s mind to have a public service teletext licence, however this was eventually to their own detriment. The licence wasn’t auctioned until early 1992, long after Thames et al had found out they’d lost their licences.

I believe there was at least one or two other bids for the teletext licence, one of which was backed by TV-am.

[Bluecortina]

We should remember local teletext services were still originated at the individual local ITV premises post 1992, only the national teletext service changed.