BBC One meltdown disrupts tonight’s schedule

BBC One (England/Scotland) experienced major technical issues at the start of tonight’s Panorama.

The problems were evident from the planned start of the programme, when a frozen countdown clock appeared. An apology caption soon took its place, and within a few minutes there was a failed attempt at getting the programme on air.

After many verbal apologies from the announcer, and prolonged periods of silence, we eventually joined the programme – some nine minutes late. However, the problems didn’t end there.

The sound quickly vanished – though the programme remained on-screen for over two minutes in this state. Some further back and forth between the programme and the apology caption followed, before the programme finally went out properly – twelve minutes into the scheduled timeslot by this point.

Viewers in Northern Ireland and Wales had their own programmes in this timeslot. BBC One Scotland remained with the network feed for the entirety of the Panorama technical breakdown.

BBC One Wales inserted a standby programme shortly after 8pm – Nigel Slater’s Unsung Heroes. This left them slightly behind the delayed network schedule, and led to EastEnders starting slightly later than network.

Wales ended up dropping Panorama from their schedule but crashed in to Would I Lie to You? (a minute or so after the programme had started) on the network feed.

BBC One Northern Ireland continued their schedule as billed until 9pm, when they inserted a large number of programme trails. This brought them more or less in sync with network for My Family, the Holocaust and Me, shortly after 9.05pm.

The BBC News at Ten was delayed (UK-wide) until shortly after 10.05pm due to the earlier technical issues.

BBC One Northern Ireland was the only variant of BBC One to get through the evening without any noticeable problems.

Unofficial sources suggest the cause of the problem was a timecode programming issue on the copy of Panorama at BBC One network playout.

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