Pop Shield

Ah England, proud country of tweed and the industrial revolution!  Where, each morning gentlemen with newspaper and umbrellas munch on buttery toast and set their watches by the good old Actual Time Signal. It’s comforting six beeps sound across the airwaves to tell that you all is shipshape, all is as it should be.  The long beep at the end that heralds the sensible news programme to follow…

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m working with the not entirely sensible Jack Daniel on the Nations Favourite Breakfast show. Due to his traditionally off-schedule chopping and changing of records up to the 8 o’clock news it is looking like the chosen record is going to be too long to fit comfortably. Producer Becky quickly finds an alternative oldie.  However, in the hurry to schedule and back-time it, she makes an error in the calculation.  This means that the record once started is all set to over-run and crash the 07:59:55 Actual Time Signal. Sacrilege! Oh well, never mind.  It’s only radio.

I select the Actual Time Signal onto an outside source fader, add +8dB of gain and fade it up as usual. But then something very strange happens. The beeps do not sound! I double-check my routing and fader choice in case something is awry. Nope, it’s all looking good to me, just no beeps. Fortunately, the nation is not plunged into silence because of the record overrun. Jack Daniel fades up his mic to joke “No beeps! Somebody nicked the beeps!”. Thankfully he trusts me enough not to point the finger in my direction. But then, against all odds, at 08:00:01 a beep sounds! Then another, and another. Then, when the sixth beep arrives it is not the usual longer pip (0.5s) but another short one (0.1s). Followed by a longer SEVENTH beep. Jack makes a quip then we play the ident and go over to the news as usual.

What ensues is absolutely classic example of institutional behaviour in times like this. First the Managing Editor appears, then the Broadcast Manager, followed by two maintenance engineers (they never, ever travel alone) and then some guys from London Control. They are all asking questions in the hope they will be the one to uncover the mystery of the extra beep. The excitement in the air is laced with the slight fear that the world is about to collapse.

All of this hubbub proves quite a distraction as we attempt to continue with the broadcast. I find out that the same late beeps have been delivered on the ABC1 Tomorrow programme. It is discovered that the Internal Talking Clock is also spouting the incorrect time! Woah, crazy stuff!

Finally, I receive word that it’s all been sorted out and everything is back to normal again. ”What happened?” I ask. ”Well,” says one maintenance engineer, while the other one listens.  “A computer in the bowels of London Control that uses atomic time from an adjacent master computer to generate the beeps threw a wobbler. That is to say it lost time code and caused a ‘leap beep’ to be formed. Leap beeps compensate for the difference between Atomic and Universal Time. They are usually created on New Years Eve at midnight when Big London Clock is broadcast in their place.”

“Really” say I. “And how has it been fixed?”. Then comes the answer that you probably don’t want to hear: “Well, we turned it off.  Then we turned it back on again.  And then the problem went away”.

It would appear that not even the most sensible and dependably reliable computer in England is not exempt from this little IT quirk.