BBC1 Engineering Tests (Friday 27th July 2001)

Credit goes to the old website TV Archive. On Friday 27th July 2001, the BBC closed down BBC1 for engineering tests upon their transmitters. This is a yearly test to check for the links between transmitters, signal strength, switching etc. 1.15am - BBC1 handed over to BBC News 24, nothing unusual happens, occasionally we see a long ident, or a long News 24 sting. 2.59am - BBC1 finally winded down to close, with this unusual caption, quite a generic announcement, generic across the platforms. 3.00am - Then Testcard W appeared for an hour on digital platforms. On analogue, Testcard J made an appearance after 5 seconds of Testcard W. This was the transmitters disconnecting from the network. The most action was seen on BBC1 analogue. During this time, many switching and outage tests were performed on the network. 4.00am - Then at 3.55am, BBC1 analogue rejoined the network, to broadcast Testcard W. At 3.59am, a caption appeared, and was displayed until 4:00am with the news headlines from BBC News 24.