[lookoutwales]

Westcountry's playout was based in the suite where HTV did the adverts for S4C. But of course it wouldn't have been doing that right up to midnight, probably not even into November. While the suite was converted for Westcountry the S4C ads operation was shifted elsewhere in the building.

They'd have been doing a lot of testing and piloting prior to launch. It's not a simple thing to set up, even though it was piggybacking on an existing playout operation. I think there was a lot of joint running, certainly the HTV and Westcountry overnight schedules were identical and the junctions obviously run to the same timings.

Ahh, that explains it. Thanks.

IIRC, one function that was at least handled locally* by Westcountry itself was the four-way split for local news opts? (and that didn't begin until some months after launch?)

* Granted the announcers were also based at Plympton - and taking them as a down-the-line source wouldn't have been that much different from how HTV West continuity worked in later years.