TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

Ah the days when a certain sports presenter still possessed some marbles.

That's one occasion. The other was during the week, as wogan was on that night. In a change to the plan he got presenter nicholas witchell to come on the show, and explain what had happened.

A Friday night, I seem to remember - and the following Monday, the new 1 O'Clock News set was due to be debued, which lead Witchell to joke to Wogan that 'the fire has turned that new set to a shade of burnt oak'.

The deadpan silence from the audience at the TV Theatre, showed they couldn't work out if he was joking or not.

Indeed. If I'm not mistaken, Terry introduced the piece by saying "and now hot-foot from the newsroom.....Nicholas Witchell", or words to that effect.

Groans all round.

Presentation was in a different part of TV Centre to where the news was - in the Spur rather than the man circular block - Pres were in the 'wedge' at the opposite side of the circular block. Presumably far enough away not to have require evacuation.

Budget cuts so severe at the time that Songs of Praise had to be reduced to just one song.

Rather than going on London Live to spout dangerous conspiracy theories.

Indeed, Martyn Lewis was actually the billed guest that evening to talk about the new One O'Clock News, so Witchell joined him. Lewis had been poached from ITN after the Beeb had done audience research to find housewives' favourite newsreader.

I vividly remember it, we switched on while it was off the air and showing a caption and music. Obviously it was some piddly electrical fire but I was a stupid kid so I assumed it was some raging inferno which was killing everyone in its path, and after that and the Section 28 protests I started avoiding the Six O'Clock News for a while in case anything else went wrong.

On one of the website for old BBC employees they mention that Saturday night bulletin, the alarm started going off on air and as they went into a report, they phoned presentation and said "As you can hear, we're getting out, we don't know how long this report lasts but when it finishes that's it, bye". In fact it was quite an unusual Saturday night in that it was the only live programme on BBC1 all night, so it was a bit of a pain to reschedule everything.

A Chris Rogers era Newsround fell off air due to a fire. I didn't see it but I did see Rogers explain on the next edition the reasons behind the "dramatic fade to black". (I can't remember if I saw that live or on a pres site years later.) Presumably CBBC pres would have filled until the next programme.

I wonder what would have happened if the next programme was Blue Peter? Assuming they were in a studio at the other side of the donut that hadn't had to evacuate, presumably they would have had the amber "alert" lights flashing if nearby zones had gone into "evacuate". Would they put a studio on air in that state or stick a filler on until the situation was clearer?

I remember Newsround being abandoned during one episode, but I could have sworn it was in the late 80s during the Roger Finn era. We distinctly heard the voice of the floor manager (I assume) during a report saying “Hold it there, everyone. We have a fire. Vacate the studio please” then the programme faded to black and the CBBC presenter came on apologising. I think the following programme was probably Grange Hill on that occasion - the most likely reason I would have been watching. ISTR that the Newsround presenter joined the announcer in the Broom Cupboard during the closing link that day explaining that a bucket had caught fire for some reason. I could be recalling the era incorrectly as it was so long ago, and maybe we are referring to the same incident?

Almost certainly a different occasion. This was definitely Chris Rogers.

Talking of fire alarms,not sure exactly what the story was here, whether they actually set off one of the studio smoke alarms or made out they did: