Talk:Television in the United Kingdom/Archives/2013

Question about Television in the UK.

Hey I have a question about Television over in the UK, from what I've been reading it sounds like various stations sign off, but what happens durring the period when thier signed off is it just a blank screen or are they infomercials? Also what's up with stations like BBC Four and CBees sharing the same frequency does that mean after one signs off the other comes on that channel?Deathawk 00:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Very, very few stations "sign off" anymore in the classical sense. Some stations stop their regular programming overnight and show a logo, screengrabs of their teletext, infomercials (rare, mind), music videos, upcoming programme schedules, etc.

BBC 4 and CBeebies timeshare, one ends at 6:55PM, the other starts at 7PM, and then theres a handover again some time in the early morning. Its a quick and hacky way of saving bandwidth, its been done for years - in the very early 1990's channels were doing it to get "More channels" onto the limited space on Astra 1A, CBeebies + BBC4 do it due to lack of space on DTT. --Kiand 00:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What USED to happen in the old days when stations did shut down overnight was that they'd show the test card, or just blank carrier. The transmitters were never powered down. Graham 00:54, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

They were at one time. For example, the BBC's Crystal Palace VHF transmitter during the 1970's was generally switched off about half an hour after closedown, which was typically around midnight or 12:30 a.m. at that time, unless some special event was taking place. Start-up the next morning normally consisted of carrier appearing at 8:00 a.m., then a standard sequence of alignment and test signals from 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. (pulse & bar, greyscale, 50Hz). If no programming was actually starting at 9:00 a.m. (which was most of the time), then it would be the usual test card "F" and music. 87.115.191.12 (talk) 17:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Examples of Shutdown, over night BBC One simucasts BBC News 24; BBC Two shows educational programmes on behalf of the Open University (in addition sometimes shows cycling screengrabs of teletext pages usually between 05h00' and 07h00'); ITV1 shows ITV Nightscreen which is a simply graphic presentation highlighting future programming; As far as I know Channel 4 and five have no shutdown at all. Long gone are the days of testcards being shown during downtime. Y control 11:37, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, did not the national anthem get palyed upon shut down? I'm only in my early 20s but I'm sure I remember it happening a few times hen I was really young. Or am I mistaken? Either way, I'm sure a lot of this stuff here should be put in the article. It doesn't look like we have a History of British Television so much of this could be included here. The article appears to concentrate on the current state of television, but could be expanded (by those in the know) to have a solid over view of the history and development it has made over the best part of a century. Evil Eye 14:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

BBC One used to play the national anthem before closedown every night. However, this stopped in 1997 when it started simucasting News 24 overnight. After the national anthem finished playing (IIRC) the BBC 1 globe faded out and the screen went blank. A few minutes after that it switched to the Test Card and Tuning Signal. I'm not sure that BBC Two played the national anthem. I have no idea what ITV used to do as it has broadcast 24hrs since the 80s, so I'm too young.

Can certainly remember that C4 didnt used to start until about 1pm though.Pit-yacker 23:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Bit of a late answer, but ITV companies used to close down with an announcement, sometimes "in-vision") followed by a clock or station Ident, with "station ID" music over, before fading to black. By the time I saw it, the trasnmitters were being left on all night. The 24 hour service started regionally - cannot remember date --Keith 20:48, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

ITV was playing the national anthem into the early 1980's if not later, at least in some regions. Remember that being a regional service the continuity announcements and closedown sequence were local, so practice may have changed in different regions at different times. 87.115.191.12 (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Viewing figures - Problem

I think there are issues with some of the viewing figures used in this page. Given the spread of information which has been derived from BARB's data, most of it appears to have come from BARB's "Multi Channel Viewing" summary pages. But until the end of 2009, this data solely relates to multi-channel households (i.e. those with Freeview or satellite or cable). These do not include viewers who only received terrestrial free-to-air analogue broadcasts. So, for example, the 1992 column in the table "Table showing viewing share of individual channels from 1992 to 2009" gives BBC 1 a 25% share which is true for multi-channel viewers, but for all viewers the share would seem to be around 33%. Similarly in 1992, the total viewing share of all "other channels" combined (i.e. any but BBC 1/2, ITV and Channel 4/S4C) was between 4% and 5% (see here on BARB's website for sample 1992 week) not 23+% as per the table here. Similar problems affect the "Combined viewing shares for all channels from different television companies in 2008" pie chart, although with the number of multi-channel households increasing as the years pass, the 2008 multi-channel data will represent a larger proportion of all viewers than it would have done in 1992 - but it's still misleading.

Obviously these issues can be "fixed" just by changing the captions on the tables/charts, but I would question how useful these multi-channel only figures really are in an article about Television in the UK as a whole. Simon Coward (talk) 10:53, 21 July 2013 (UTC)