Clean Feed

Timeline: 2023 Week 27


By

Filed under

A round-up of the week’s stories and observations.

Tuesday 4th July

11.45am BT Sport MCR officially closed

BT Sport lead engineer Gavin Moffitt has confirmed via Twitter that the BT Sport MCR is now officially closed:

“All services migrated and MCR officially closed, so that really IS the end of BT Sport in Stratford. The hardware decommissioning has started this morning.”

Wednesday 5th July

1.45am Overnight playout-related testing on ITV 1

There seems to be some playout-related testing in progress on ITV 1 just now.

We’ve no idea whether or not this is disaster recovery-related or some other type of testing.

In the last 30 minutes or so, we’ve noted the presence of a “LONDON” indicator in the top right of screen, in regions normally associated with the Southern Transmission Centre (STC) in Chiswick:

  • London
  • Anglia
  • Central
  • Channel (we didn’t verify this one)
  • Meridian
  • UTV
  • West Country

UPDATE: later in the night, the text-based indicator in the top right corner changed from “LONDON” to a region-specific identifier on a black background, accompanied by the text “STC” (presumably, Southern Transmission Centre).

UPDATE: a little later again, and we’ve spotted some indicators in a similar style to the earlier “LONDON” version, but this time for “CNWEST” (Central West) and BTE. Due to the late hour, we didn’t carry out a full sweep of all ITV 1 HD regions, so can’t provide a definitive report.

UPDATE (6th July): a limited spot-check of ITV 1 regions in the early hours suggests more playout testing was carried out tonight. One of our overnight recordings of ITV 1 Central shows a “CNWEST” indicator in the top right corner of the screen:

7.45pm BBC Local NUJ members to take part in third strike

The National Union of Journalists has confirmed that NUJ members working for BBC Local in England will walk out on strike for 24 hours from 11am on 20th July.

This is the third strike over cuts to BBC Local Radio.

Thursday 6th July

12pm TCM Movies no longer available on Sky

It’s the end of an era: TCM Movies and TCM Movies + 1 have now been pulled from Sky. The channel still had films scheduled until the end of the day!

TCM replaced TNT in the UK in the late-1990s. We come full circle later this month when the TNT brand returns.

Courtesy @a516digital.

10.15pm No regional news on BBC One tonight

The late-night coverage of Andy Murray’s latest match at Wimbledon has caused the late BBC One regional news to be cancelled.

The regional news would’ve ended up displaced to a slot after 11pm, Due to a work-to-rule by NUJ members in England, in protest at cuts to BBC Local Radio, staff would’ve walked out at 11pm, when their late shift ends.

UPDATE: national newsrooms in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales did not broadcast a late news programme. Each of these nations has their own BBC One playout operation and could easily have timeshifted the late BBC One schedule to accommodate their planned local news programmes.

Saturday 8th July

1.45am BBC English regions showing BBC London on EPG

The extensive coverage of Wimbledon later today on BBC One means the usual early evening regional news bulletin has shifted to lunchtime.

EPG data for all English regions is currently showing this bulletin as BBC London News.

Is this an EPG error?

UPDATE (12.15pm): it would appear that it was indeed an error in the EPG data. A normal service of regional news programmes went out across England at 12.10pm.

2.20pm Rare sighting of Sky Sports F1 VT clock

It’s not often a VT clock makes it to air on any channel these days, so always worth sharing when one pops up.

Courtesy @mdurrant93.

RELATED ARTICLE: Timeline: 2023 Week 26.

RELATED ARTICLE: Timeline: 2023 Week 28.

Acknowledgements

FEATURE IMAGE:

PICTURED: BT Sport colour bars. COPYRIGHT: BT Sport.