'Lights Out...' | The Great BBC Power Failure of 2000
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ก.พ. 2025
- Running television is difficult, and in the year 2000, the BBC would experience one the WORST POWER FAILURES in its entire history! One that would almost completely wipe it, from the airwaves...
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#bbc #powerfailure #2000
My time at ITV Channel Television saw quite a few technical failures, luckily the public was unaware of most them thanks to the backup systems. The only major issue that almost took us off the air was when both main and backup AC in the CAR failed at the height of summer and the room temperature got so high that we were sure something in there would fail. We resorted to gathering as many fans as possible to keep airflow moving through the room until the HVAC engineer could fix the system.
You still had the feed from TVS, didn’t you?
@ziyaadjamil2324 I can't remember, left back in 2008
ah yes I too worked at "ITV Channel Television", as all current and former staff definitely call it.
Similarly UKTV, when it was played out from TC, had a fan on one of its bays to keep UK Gold on air...
@@T.E.S.S. I only call it that on the internet because some people get confused with a Canadian station also called CTV
The most dramatic time a TV station went off the air probably was when Televisa's headquarter in Chapultepec Avenue was struck by the Mexico earthquake of 1985. One transmiting tower colapsed and killed part of the staff, apart from completely destroying a whole wing of the building. It took 5 hours to resume broadcastings.
Yikes, at that point I would have waited a few weeks while they got sorted.
Only 5 hours? That's crazy!
Televisa was (I think still is) the largest Spanish-speaking media conglomerate in the world. The had the muscle to do it. That day, an improvised newsroom was set up in a different studio located in another part of the city. They not only had to report the havoc created by the earthquake, but sadly also the death of their colleagues.
@@rustledjammies8769 Yeah, that was because at that time, they run out of space at Televisa Chapultepec HQ, so they start the acquisition of their San Angel HQ, to get more space to produce more programs (because Televisa was very big, and had 4 channels (2, 4, 5, 8), so when earthquake happend, the masters of all the channels were at the Chapultepec HQ, so in fact was 4 channels off the air, then in 5 hours, they transfer their masters into San Angel HQ, and resume broadcasting, with the most of live programming, and with the little video library they had there
The thing about back-up generators is that all being well they *should* never need to be used, and are therefore seen by the high-ups in budgeting as an easy target for cost cutting (fuel and maintenance being the costs involved). I worked in a branch of a major supermarket and we once had a power cut where the back-up generator kicked in then immediately failed again, which apparently was because it had no fuel in it to save the expense of fuel that they thought would likely never get used (I presume that fuel can't sit in a generator forever and has to be changed out unused from time to time?).
This video was appropriately timed for this Swindonian, as we had a power cut here yesterday that knocked out over 42,000 homes and businesses and brought our town centre to a standstill.
Thank you for the insight! A similar situation could've befallen the back up generator at the Beeb!
We had something similar in 2012, when I worked in an office complex. During a hot summer day, the power grid called it quits and we were left in the darkness. The main power generator failed, and by the time the secondary generator was on only essential employees were told to stay until they ran out of fuel.
@@AdamMartynComing at the tail end of John Birt’s time of penny pinching, privatising and reorganising management within the BBC, I’d say his policies were the reason for this.
Well we had it for 15 seconds I live in Moredon, North Swindon at 11:45am on Saturday 1st February 2025
Now, some organisations use their back up generators as a peak power station. The generator kicks in regularly and the company earns money to pay for the fuel and maintenance
'Temporary faults', as they were once called, used to be relatively common in the 70's and 80's, (and beyond, to a lesser degree), and always felt quite special when they happened, in that us viewers got to experience something that we weren't supposed to see. A similar sensation, but even more so, than watching the test card or the engineering tests they would often do after closedown, when they thought no-one was watching! It felt, 'special', in some way as though we were allowed, 'in', on part of the intricacies of how it all worked.
I remember back in the 1970s, when i was only about 8 years old, They used to broadcast 'Play School' on BBC2 at 11:00am, then occasionally after it had finished at 11:25, they used to broadcast transmitter engineering information.
I remember it well - We lost house lights in the MCR but kept going on the UPS for a short while until, as you say, the gens gave out and we were left in the dark... Phones still worked though and we took a lot of calls from the regions, wondering what was going on.
I wasn't on duty for the next big outage when a huge busbar phase literally exploded in the corridor outside and took out the whole news centre...
Back then there were statutory requirements as to how many hours battery backup telephone exchanges were fitted with.
Honestly technical problems like this are fun to look back on.
As someone who has worked in live TV all over the world with different companies (including the BBC) I can assure you it is never a well oiled machine and something will almost always go wrong, viewers rarely see it though due to everything having a backup.
Working in live TV (especially live sports) ruins the viewing experience as you know what to look out for and when certain things have gone wrong and they always do.
HOLY COW that explosion
Mad isn't it!
The power failure during Euro 2008 was an interesting one, with the IBC losing power cutting the international feed whilst a separate local feed kept Austrian TV, possibly a German channel and Swiss TV going. Strangely I think also Al Jazeera Sport had a separate feed for some reason. BBC ended up playing Radio 5 Live on BBC1 for a while.
German TV was on the international feed too. It went out for maybe 5-10 minutes before they switched over to a feed from Swiss TV. It was quite an interesting experience.
My recollection is that when the News fell off air, leaving black screens, control automatically defaulted to Birmingham, where a Dad’s Army episode was all ready to play in such an eventuality, and that it did so very soon afterwards (possibly part way through, although I might be mistaken) without announcement.
There was no automatic switch, it was a manual process initiated in W12. The duty comms engineer at Pebble Mill thought something was up, loaded some tapes and only pressed play once he saw his output coming back on the BBC 1 and 2 network feeds them on Net1 as a holding programme - there was no announcement as the regions had opted out (including the Midlands). These programme tapes (15 in total) sat in the comms area of Pebble Mill for precisely this eventuality, BBC 1 got Dad's Army, BBC 2 got a Michael Palin documentary. The Euro game was done from London as some power had been restored but the OS routed through Pebble Mill for redundancy, so they were simulcasting it to nobody in case they fell off air again.
where did you get this information?
The BBC Television Centre has always had bad luck with power supplies. 1964 with the launch of BBC 2 saw a massive power cut to west London, blacking out their opening night of BBC 2. Television Centre in 1964 had no generators, those wouldn't arrive until the 1970s I was told. And when they did arrive, the generators had to power such a large building, that there were chances the generators themselves would catch fire, which they did in this 2000 power failure.
4:12 “With operations now limited to nonexistent” 😂
I thought it was "extremely limited to non-existent" as in "extremely limited, if not non-existent"
I'm thankful for the old outtakes, without them we'd never have had It'll Be Alright On The Night and Auntie's Bloomers lol. Remind us that even celebrities aren't immune to things going wrong 🙂
13 years later in the Philippines, GMA Network had a similar incident as well...
1:06 That breakdown during Star Trek is one of my favourites! I loved how the dramatic music built up to the climax only for the machine to go down at the end!😄😄😄
Couldn't have been better timed 👌😂
Actually I read somewhere that the reason that breakdown happened was because in the original version that was the point where the opening sequence played out but for some unknown reason the BBC moved the opening credits right to the very beginning and as a result the film broke in half right at the point where the opening credits were meant to play out!
@@KRPTV that's exactly the cause :) though the reason isn't unknown - it's because British TV didn't used to do the "teaser" scene before openings. All American imports were edited this way. Of course, the editing was done on tape later on! Which helped prevent this kind of thing.
It was 'The Galileo Seven' IIRC. It was restarted in just a few minutes, and it was in just the right place so that a pause-button edit wouldn't even be noticeable... so it was a perfect breakdown really. They repeated it again at the end of the series, which was good for those who hadn't been present to edit during transmission.
@@MadBiker-vj5qj it was The Return of the Archons, the evil planet-controlling computer had just brainwashed Sulu when he collapsed in apparent ecstasy on the transporter pad. (Oh god, I can recognise episodes by a brief snippet of a scene… jeez…)
I always think it’s funny when radios have dead air. When you look at the other people around you with a “it’s not just me is it?” Expression
Glad you included the Interview with Hugh Edwards outside Broadcasting House. For Histories Sake.
yes we should not try to re-write history
The way dated OB (Outside Broadcast) trucks are equiped and used is shocking from my personal experince. Honestly most live broadcasts I've worked on or with are only kept going by the increadibly skilled engineers that work them and even that a lot of the time is emptying out a the bucket of luck and hoping the last minute bodge doesnt fail mid transmission.
Phil Neville still wishes the power had stayed off so we couldn't see his terrible attempt at a tackle that gave Romania a penalty
Always wondered if you were going to do a vid on this topic, Good stuff! Really good
Thank you so much!
EDF energy providing their usual service and a domino effect occurs. Who remembers when half of London lost power because - and I'm not making this up: a technician used the wrong fuse? Once again, a domino effect.
The 'wrong fuse' was a simplification for 'Joe Public'. What actually happened is an incorrectly adjusted Buchholz relay on a transformer tripped forcing the transformer to shut down.
The legend has finally covered this great event 💯
25 years later, the BBC still has (most) of these issues digitally.
Our transmitter (Shatton) goes offline probably once a month - power cuts are frequent here, usually in bad weather. So many times have I been listening to the radio, followed by static, or TV, followed by a black screen and "no signal" message. About 30 seconds later it all comes back on.
i was wondering when you were gonna do this topic for a video and im glad you did :)
im surprised there hasn't been a time when the bbc broke down trying to show an episode of doctor who
Happy to oblige!
@awesomedudeyou8 UK Gold actually did at least once in the fireworks era.
@DanielMullins-c4s1 can you remember when they did?
I WAS JUST LOOKING BACK INTO THIS A FEW DAYS AGO AND YOU UPLOADED IT PERFRCT TIMING OMG.
This has gotta be BBC's most popular power failure ever
Second most popular. The one that ruined BBC2’s opening night is more famous.
@stickytapenrust6869 Yeah I forgot about that one
The history of Play School on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
That night England were playing Romania in a vital Euro 2000 game
After watching this, I’m reminded of a similar incident in Australia in 2005. The Seven Network’s playout centre in Melbourne fell over during prime time viewing blacking out the popular drama Blue Heelers on the east coast, and current affairs show Today Tonight and Home & Away on the west coast. From memory, they were off the air for about 90 minutes and ironically, they still won the ratings that night. Seven replayed that episode of Blue Heelers the following week.
Back in late 1999 I remember seeing some backup generators in the car park close to the Stage 6 entrance at BBC TV Centre, they were there in case the Millennium Bug cut off all the power. I assume by August 2000 when this occurred they'd all be removed.
September 24th 2000? Exactly one year before I was born
A great and informative video
a generator "exploding" is really hilarius. like, engeneers are supposed to calculate loads balancing and safety measures, it's not conceivable for a generator to violently fail, let alone normal.
i suppose it might have been sitting for ages without maintenance, but even that seems strange, i guess you can't failsafe an engine trowing a rod because Billy forgot to replace the oil that Pilly drained (made up on the moment, i can't see a dynamo exploding)
It was Pipes from Ghostwatch.
They didn’t have a _secondary_ backup generator!? Chief O’Brien would _never_ approve of this.
O'Brien and Torres losing their minds at this
LaForge would take it on the chin tho
@ bloody Cardies!
I just watched this episode last night, and I thought the same thing.
They did, did you not watch the video? It caught fire on start up.
3 certain things in life: death, dodgy people at the BBC, and england crashing out of major tournaments
and to think that the BBC had a minireunion with failures, coincidentally, 17 years later.
~J
love seeing technical faults better than the programs and a lot more entertaining😊 thanks again for another great video😊
Thank you!
I remember when this happened, and my mum blamed ME for it! I kid you not.
I feel so sorry for you!
Nicely produced and well done for mentioning Huw Edwards and his um problems!
I don't know why, but it seemed a bit ironic that in the clip of him being interviewed he said "we were left isolated and in the dark"
Back when people believed the news BBC around the late 90s and early 00s was enjoyable to watch.
Had a load test at work and the generators were not enough for the job. Went straight into load shedding with various areas being switched on and off. I do recall a power shortage in ‘79 caused by a strike at the generation plants. All TV was shut down but the transmitters remained on air. I was able to confirm that by using my bicycle generator and a home made rectifier to power a 12 inch b/w TV. All were showing captions about the power shortage
The backup generator did not "explode". It caught fire... You don't hang a building that size off a single genny. In fact, I recall there were several generators that wouldn't even start. Another one did manage to start, and then caught fire.🤦
A generator catching fire is not usually because of excessive load; all gen sets have load limiters, they will cut power if their max load is exceeded, of fuses/breakers will blow. Most back up generators are designed to power essential circuits only. Rarely is a generator back up for the whole building... The fire would have been some other mechanical problem, probably from lack of or poor maintenance...
6:57 thats hilarious irony for a program about Biden to fail
I'm surprised to see that there was overlap between Michael Burke and Huw Edwards
I remember watching this, and was delighted when Newsroom South East didn't air at 6.30pm and instead we got a repeat of Dad's Army. I was so happy!
Bro this guy is the goat at explaining I want to watch it again
Feel free to watch it again! I'm glad it's explained in a decent way!
2:12.. Oh boy. If only DTV was actually reliable and better,
If only it had been permanent
Wow, half a year before 9/11 and London had its very own attempt at a terrorist attack...I was 12 and going to High School at this time, why don't I remember this??!!!?
It was hardly news, the various splinters of the IRA semi-regularly set off bombs or issued bomb threats on the UK mainland, particularly in London.
Does anyone remember a live D DAY anniversary special. I think it involved Bob Hope on a ship in the channel. If I recall it was due to begin around 6pm and after an hour of “apologies” they just gave up.
what actually caused them to go to generator backup?
Seeing that explosion happen a year later is insane.
Crazy
Why was the fire alarm triggered already at the beginning of the problems, yet before the backup power generator caught fire? Did the alarm system just malfunction because of the power fluctuations and instability? Or was that generator already on fire? Or did I get all of that wrong from the video and the evacuation took place after that backup generator exploded?
Were people allowed to get back to work once it was confirmed that there was no fire?
And by the way, shouldn't such critical infrastructure as the major studios of the national TV of the country be provided with power from more than one substations from different directions, like e.g. hospitals are? I mean, you cannot prevent all possible power problems, there is always a possibility that something malfunctions in the electrical system within the building - but in this case, from what I understand, it would help.
There was another technical failure with Something For The Weekend on BBC 2 as there was a problem with the graphics and/or BT Tower interference somehow😬
Never knew and never cared.
10:11 good ol test screen w
An underrated classic 👌
I like the old test screen
AND THE BACKUP MACHINE IGNITES 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
...and there was I, ready to don my anorak and pounce upon some trivial inaccuracy but hats off, really enjoyed the whole thing. You're getting rather good at this, aren't you? ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Suggestion for future video - the history of RBS - where transmitters would switch to a backup feed if the primary feed was down, etc.
All tv stations have balls up, I mean, look at the amount of out take shows like aunties bloomers or it'll be all right on the night .
The GMA Network in the Philippines has its own share of troubles. They had been taken off air due to the fire in their electrical power room at their building in Manila (geographically, Quezon City). When they resumed, their tech was limited and they had to do with limited video graphics, and no simultaneous TH-cam broadcasts as they regularly do. I wish someone managed to record that moment.
Had worse. The power went out and the cause of this was a generator error (and the house later stopped having power)
what a bad day at bbc 😮😮😮
Why does early 2000s BBC look so 90s
@@badcat-v1d The same is true of any decade. The early 90s still looked a bit 80s, the early 80s still looked very 70s and so on.
It takes a couple of years for a new decade’s fashions to become established.
And if you compare the early 2000's to the early 90's, they couldn't be more different.
I think there is definitely a unique bubble which existed between 97-02 with colourful Y2K optimism before everything (fashion, media, ambitions etc.) drastically changes due to a certain event
Mostly to do with the recording media at the time. The live TV would have looked pretty good for 480p, but the footage in this film would have been from old VHS that was probably not great to start with, but even poorer after transcoding etc...
Not judging but your pfp gives me the creeps
@@dougle03 It would have been 576i, not 480p.
Critical infrastructure these days is much better served. For example, Network Rail's signalling control centres have two diverse power feeds from seperate legs of the power grid, two transformers in the grounds of the building. There are two standby generators capable of powering the entire building, one is duty, the other standby. Inside the building there are two huge battey rooms and associated inverters that are designed to provide seamless power in the event both DNO supplies fail whilst waiting for the generators to spool up. All critical equipment in the building has two independent power supplies thus should never fall off line. All the signalling is fail-safe (Will go to red) if they lose signals from the centre.
Even the air handling and air conditioning is considered critical systems.
There is an on-site load bank that is used to regularly test the generators to ensure they will work when needed. Most of the centres also have a temporary generator pad with isolated fuel supply so if one of the two generators are off line being maintained, there is a temporary third brought in to ensure there is still two generators available to the building.
A lot has changed since the BBC's power problems back in 2000. Very little is left to chance these days where it's critical a system remains in service.
I won't go into the physical protection these buildings employ, as that would be naughty of me...
I really enjoy these shows. I've always been fascinated with the history of television, and even though I'm not British I like hearing how the UK has handled their TV services. I especially like hearing how they handle it when things go wrong. I've seen videos about these events before, but it's good to get some background on them. I've also seen other videos about other power failures in the early 2000s - it would be interesting if you decided to do something on them someday. Thanks for what you do. 😊
Can you imagine the amount of people shouting and bad language that was used behind the scenes.
England's Euro 2000 game the pictures would been from a joint BRT-RTBF & NOS Production
It was the delayed Millennium Bug🕷️
👀
2:27 - ah yes I remember this day well
I was freshly 2
The sequel to the Y2K millennium bug phenomenon, which later jumped into the CrowdStrike global Blue Screen of Death outage!😂😂😂
Excellent documentary Adam, although I had expected this documentary to come out on the 20th of June, which would have been the actual 25th anniversary of this power cut, I wonder why.........
What a complete BBC SH*Tshow back then, and yeah, blowing up a generator?! HOW?!!!
I like how BBC World in Latvia is a paid channel
I was 5 years old when it happened in 2000. You should do the other BBC Power Failures
Was TVC seriously fed from just one substation? Back in 1986, in Durban, South Africa, a new theatre was opened. To ensure service continuity, the venue was fed from no less than three substations. I remember seeing, on one of the PDU panels, a current meter measuring in Kilo-Amps...
QLMB covered this in 2021 I think
i didnt want to say anything but... yes... i did
Now all of BBC Television and Radio News are based at BBC Broadcasting House in London, if that location has power problems, all of BBC Television and Radio News would fall off air. Someone told me BBC Broadcasting House now has plenty of fail safes and extra generators for any emergency, as BBC Broadcasting House is now the HQ for the BBC, after the 2013 closure of BBC Television Centre and the redevelopment.
Playout is done nowadays from Red Bee who are near TV Centre. That building was originally built as a replacement for Broadcasting House and it was planned to move the radio stations there, but that plan was abandoned and playout was moved there instead.
what's the song at the 2:00 mark?
Car bomb? What?
I DON'T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS ! ! ! LOL ! ! ! 😆😂😆😂😆😂😆
real?
On 16th October 1987 after "The Great Storm" I was in Bristol which was relatively unaffected. The BBC were broadcasting from their local news studio and making comments like "If we manage to get in touch with London we will let you know more details of what has happened there."
That's not so long ago and the world was so much more poorly connected compared to what we have now...
When would you be planning of making new series doctor who 2005-2022 viewing figures?
woahhh!!!!
BBC
Technical problems are part of TV.
The ( underground ! ) transmitter hall at Crystal Palace takes it's power from two entirely different parts of South London .... This is done to provide continuity if one supply fails 😝.......................... DAVE™🛑
as a sparky, probably poor maintenance on the backup generator. the substation failure would be routine
Twitter? Ugh.
gonna tell my grandkids this was the y2k bug
👍🏻
I think i remember this from childhood me and my perants thought it was fun.
I was always slightly disappointed that I managed to miss out on both these events by a couple of weeks. The 2000 power outage occurred a month before I was due to start working at Pebble Mill, so would've been involved in the evacuation of playout to Birmingham. Then a year later, the bomb at TVC happened in the intervening period between interviewing for a job in news engineering support and actually starting there.
You look like Faustão.
Parece mais o Guy Fieri do que o Faustão, mas ok
Stuff like this is so interesting, I work in television as well, in the USA, I don’t think we’ve had something as scary as a bomb, but we’ve had tornadoes come close to hitting studio,
That's always something I wonder about during severe weather season in the States. What are the TV studios plans for if a tornado comes too Close? We got to see its of it in 2003 with KWTV and then later with REX in Chicago with the meteorologists going to shelter live on air,as well as the same thing in Kansas,but it does make me wonder if the rules are the same for TV folks as everyone else, get underground and stay there. At this rate it makes me wonder in states that can actually do this,why they don't have a weather setup in an underground storm shelter and broadcast from there
EDIT: As for bombs
The KWTV opening few minutes after the 1995 Murrah bombing are on YT and it is fascinating to see, knowing what happened with hindsight, how the station responded.Same for the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the KGO coverage is up on YT IIRC and stuff like that is incredible, as is the ABC opening coverage.FOr years you couldn't upload it or view it due to MLB's strict bans on anything MLB related,but the opening is gloriously 80s. And then the earthquake hits. There's quite a few more videos of other stations in CA responding to earthquakes while in the studio as well,thinking on it
Crazy to think that Northern Irish separatists nearly set off a bomb that interrupted broadcasts😅
I wish they kept it as news 24 it had a much better ring to it