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Technical problems take BBC News off air

Posted on 30th December 2019
By The Clean Feed Team
Last updated on 3rd July 2023
Filed under Bloopers

In the early hours of this morning, the BBC News Channel was forced to resort to recorded material from the previous hour due to technical problems.

At midnight, the domestic news channel was due to join forces with BBC World News, for a live news programme, supplied by the global channel.

However, according to unconfirmed reports, the gallery associated with the studio from which the live news programme was due to be broadcast suffered technical issues, and the programme had to be abandoned.

On the BBC News Channel, the first indication of problems was a timerless countdown sequence, just before midnight:

VIDEO: BBC News Channel: live news replaced by pre-recorded material. TX DATE/TIME: 29th December, 11.58pm. COPYRIGHT: BBC.

This was followed by a recording of the previous hour’s output from the BBC News Channel. A ‘Recorded’ bug was in place for the duration of the airing of the pre-recorded material.

The playout of the 11pm – 12am output was affected by an audio glitch, from the start. At 12.16am, the sound fault worsened, and was now accompanied by interference on vision. These issues coincided with the removal of the live clock/ticker graphic.

VIDEO: BBC News Channel: live news replaced by pre-recorded material. Audio and vision interference was present for a portion of the pre-recorded news segment. TX DATE/TIME: 30th December, 12.16am. COPYRIGHT: BBC.

The audio/vision fault was corrected shortly after the sport bulletin. Normal programming was resumed at 1am.

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FEATURE IMAGE:

PICTURED: the countdown clock is missing from the top-of-the-hour countdown sequence, just before midnight. COPYRIGHT: BBC.

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Tags: BBC, BBC News, BBC News Channel, BBC World News, On-Screen Presentation

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