Do the BBC (or any other broadcasters) have emergency broadcasting facilities?
stirlingguy1
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In the event of a national crisis and Broadcasting House was somehow not able to broadcast, do the BBC have a secret bunker to do programming from?
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Obviously, yes.
It's called Millbank. Before the BBC ran down Birmingham as a production centre it was Pebble Mill.
I'd have thought any of their regional centres could serve this purpose? In a worst case scenario, i'm pretty sure their international basis could upload via satellite and be distributed through the various platforms back in the UK, providing the infrastructure remained in situ and functional?
The playout/presentation operation (now operated by RedBee Media) is based in the Broadcast Centre near TV Centre. This can run unattended for some time if the building was evacuated although it wouldn't have announcements etc. RedBee have a permanently staffed back up facility elsewhere which can take over if the Broadcast Centre goes down. This facility has replaced Pebble Mill as the backup location although it's been speculated that Birmingham can have a role in getting the back up centre routed to air in some circumstances.
BBC News uses Millbank (aka BBC Westminster) as its backup location, as has been demonstrated in recent times when TVC had a power cut and when somebody tried to blow the place up.
ITN also use their Millbank studio as a backup location, they did a News at Ten from there a couple of years ago when there was a power cut - and were quite glad of the preceding football match going to extra time!
ITV has two playout centres in London and Leeds, if either fails the other can run the whole country albeit with reduced regional news - IIRC when London playout had problems Central provided a bulletin for the southern half of the country.
Channel 4 had a backup playout facility which they used when Horseferry Road had to be closed due to a gas leak, I think they've outsourced their playout to RedBee now so those arrangements will have changed, but I'd be pretty confident there is still a backup.
Not all broadcasters have back-ups - notably Bid TV and Price Drop have a lot of eggs in one basket and have fallen off air due to power cuts on several occasions.
Thanks for the curt reply. Thanks everyone else for the details. What would someone like Sky do in an emergency situation - they have Osterley, but aside from that, they're kind of stuck.
It is fairly obvious that anyone who does the know the full details is not going to give them in a public forum.
It is still difficult to get the full story of arrangements during the Cold War, bits are known I have never seen the full story published anywhere and there are various aspects that are unclear because very few knew more than what they needed to know.
Many local authority bunkers had BBC studios - some are still used as contribution studios for the local radio stations.
No they're not, far from it. They have a very well equipped back up site a couple of hours outside London
The bunker at Wood Norton is Cold War.
The BBC sold off much of the site, the house is a posh hotel.
Nup, there are actually two bunkers. One is in the hillside and was operational in 1939. Apart from being an emergency control centre for the BBC it also monitored foreign (ie German) broadcasts. A second bunker was built in 1966 under what is now called Bredon Wing but - again - never saw action.I agree it's a posh hotel, I once had the pleasure of dining there:D
I attended a wedding reception there in 2001, a pint of Guinness was the best part of a fiver, and that was before the refurb !
Thankfully when I stayed there someone else was paying
Good idea ! I'm glad we weren't staying there, we got a taxi back to a Travelodge !
Apparently several commercial radio outfits shared the cost of an emergency broadcast studio out side London.
So he asked "who got to use it if something major happened" ...
Answer was- "first one to get there gets the studio".
Presumably Global Radio, owners of Classic FM, LBC, and Heart, Smooth, and Capital branded local stations could broadcast from any of the provincial studio centres and IP distribution network used by Heart and Capital should their Leicester Sq building suffer a catastrophe ?
The ultimate standard fall back was that everything would come from Pebble Mill (which dates it) should central London have a major emergency (possibly flooding prior to the Thames Barrier).
On top of that would have been the highly secretive back up systems to provide a very basic news service if there was a national emergency.
I do not know what systems are in place now, nor would I be posting details here if I did, but that should give an idea as to how seriously the all the various eventualities are considered to make sure the transmitters keep radiating something.
...What I would worry more about is broadcasters and society in generals reliance on outsourced IT systems and "The Internet" in general - I suspect Telehouse Docklands is *far* more critical to keeping on air in a bad situation rather than the mechanics of finding a room to use as a studio.
You can find out about how the UK might have been affected by a nuclear war by visiting http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/features/sfs/
HA HA 1955 speak.
Nowadays we would say: Run or your face will melt off and the world will exit via your arse!