Powercut at Grays Inn Road: 4/4/22

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Interesting. Could we be in for day 2 of disruption? I would suspect so unless the power comes back on in the next hour or two.

I suspect contingency plans were made yesterday should the disruption continue, but then again they may just take the jaunt back up to Leeds if needs must and it worked yesterday.

The contingency plans would have been long-standing, they wouldn't have just made it up yesterday.

And yes, if Leeds worked OK yesterday why would they need to do anything else today? No point undoing all yesterday's contingencies. Even if the power is back I'd imagine they'd have Leeds ready as a back up, or decide later in the day whether to fully return

Another thing that came to mind yesterday is why they didn’t use the studio that they use for the regional political programmes at Millbank? Unless that’s been addressed and I’ve just missed it.

As I suggested a few pages ago having a backup plan that is also in London isn't any good if the problem affects lots of London - if the power cut included Millbank for example.

Leeds is also home to one of ITVs two playout sites so it's the obvious place, if GiR and Millbank and Chiswick are all out of action, ITV can come from there

Yep the Northern Transmission Centre is based in Leeds and acted as a backup centre with switching Lines before when other studios failed (eg: Granada had tech issues a few years back).

[Inspector Sands]

Must be really bad for it to still not be working properly. I wonder what the issue is?

The biggedt issue when this sort of thing happens is that systems get powered down suddenly and then sometimes there are issues when they are brought back on afterwards. So possibly there's a bit of configuring, fixing or testing to do.

Also it's not necessarily that easy to just start again as normal from the normal place. Firstly there's the issue that some of their staff will be in the wrong place, they'll need to cover both Leeds and London at some point. But also operationally it takes a while to catch up too, they will have lost a day or two of the production workflow. Returning needs to be planned carefully

[EDCanada]

Really impressed with the technical capabilities of the Calendar production gallery tonight. Several live reports within News at Ten.

[AaronLancs]

Interesting. Could we be in for day 2 of disruption? I would suspect so unless the power comes back on in the next hour or two.

I suspect contingency plans were made yesterday should the disruption continue, but then again they may just take the jaunt back up to Leeds if needs must and it worked yesterday.

The contingency plans would have been long-standing, they wouldn't have just made it up yesterday.

And yes, if Leeds worked OK yesterday why would they need to do anything else today? No point undoing all yesterday's contingencies. Even if the power is back I'd imagine they'd have Leeds ready as a back up, or decide later in the day whether to fully return

Another thing that came to mind yesterday is why they didn’t use the studio that they use for the regional political programmes at Millbank? Unless that’s been addressed and I’ve just missed it.

As I suggested a few pages ago having a backup plan that is also in London isn't any good if the problem affects lots of London - if the power cut included Millbank for example.

Leeds is also home to one of ITVs two playout sites so it's the obvious place, if GiR and Millbank and Chiswick are all out of action, ITV can come from there

Yep the Northern Transmission Centre is based in Leeds and acted as a backup centre with switching Lines before when other studios failed (eg: Granada had tech issues a few years back).

Sorry to slightly off topic. Why was Leeds chosen as the Northern Transmission Centre and not something like Manchester? Also how long have they been the Transmission Centre? As I said sorry to go off topic.

[Markymark]

Sorry to slightly off topic. Why was Leeds chosen as the Northern Transmission Centre and not something like Manchester? Also how long have they been the Transmission Centre? As I said sorry to go off topic.

It sort of evolved in the 90s. YTV initially took over Tyne Tees playout. Separately Granada had been looking after Border's playout.
Then when all the mergers etc in ITV started happening, it was decided to consolidate YTV, Granada, TTTV and Border into unified playout. There was space at Leeds to expand, so the Northern playout centre ended up there.

The same thing had been happening down south. Firstly Meridian had taken on HTV West and Anglia playout, then those three regions were sucked into LNN's operation, and so on.....

[Ben Shatliff]

Just seen the promo for the Evening News. Is it still from Leeds or is normal service now resumed?

[Brekkie]

Looks like they're back in London.

[London Lite]

Looks like they're back in London.

Lunchtime was from GiN as well.

[Richard]

Sorry to slightly off topic. Why was Leeds chosen as the Northern Transmission Centre and not something like Manchester? Also how long have they been the Transmission Centre? As I said sorry to go off topic.

It sort of evolved in the 90s. YTV initially took over Tyne Tees playout. Separately Granada had been looking after Border's playout.
Then when all the mergers etc in ITV started happening, it was decided to consolidate YTV, Granada, TTTV and Border into unified playout. There was space at Leeds to expand, so the Northern playout centre ended up there.

Not sure Granada ever provided Border’s playout in Manchester. Capital Radio bought Border in about 2000 and outsourced playout to Leeds. Granada had bought Yorkshire-Tyne Tees by that point and Leeds was already handling playout for all three regions.

Border’s schedules had been similar to Granada’s for a number of years (in line with UTV and others) and they took Granada Soccer Night.

[deejay]

Wasn’t there two variants of border though so that the bit closest to Scotland took Scottish football and the other bit took Granadas? I have vague memories of BorderSco and BorderEng on sky…

And I was pretty sure there was a period where Granada handled Border’s TX.

[Markymark]

Not sure Granada ever provided Border’s playout in Manchester.

Oh they did, it grew out of the night time programming provision. I discovered recently that Granada's PAL+ transmissions, also ended going out on Border Caldbeck as a by-product.

I think by the time the Caldbeck/Selkirk split occurred, (aka Border Eng/Scot) playout had possibly moved to Leeds ?

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Really impressed with the technical capabilities of the Calendar production gallery tonight. Several live reports within News at Ten.

It's relatively straight forward - all the ITV newsrooms have access to feeds so they just need to know what they are and assign them to the gallery.