Digital Love

Last night Kate and I went to see the Arqiva Switch Over Night light show from the Crystal Palace transmitter.  The previous night had seen the analogue signal switched off in the London area and to mark the final relay transmitters being switched onto the new digital signal, Arqiva had decided to hold a publicity stunt - I mean a celebration to mark this historic occasion, by lighting up the mast.  As a confirmed TV geek I was keen to go.  Kate went along with it all...although she's as much of a geek as me and tends to keep it hidden!

Crystal Palace transmitter before night desceneded

It wasn't the best night for the light show. Pretty horrendous weather all week meant it was cold and wet, and reports indicated that the visibility was such that the show wouldn't be able to be seen from across south London as had orignally been the intention. Still, the locals were getting in on the act with most of the surrounding pubs unusually busy for a Wednesday night, and some even putting on special celebrations themselves. Arqiva had orignally advised spectators to head to local pubs to watch the show, as Crystal Palace Park is usually shut from the early evening onwards. They even went to the effort of publicising a "tweetup" on their website - perhaps not entirely understanding how tweetups tend to be organised - and held in a pub...round the back of the Crystal Palace triangle with no visibility of the mast at all.

Along with hundreds of others we headed into the park at about 9pm. Eventually we found a good viewing spot and as the clock ticked up to 9.15pm we waited. And waited. By 9.25pm it was clear something had either gone very wrong, or the "VIP event" was overrunning badly. A quick check of Twitter revealed that it was the latter - but most of the public waiting in the wet were none the wiser. Holding a heavily publicised celebration that the public could not attend was a slightly odd decision, especially when the thing overran and left all the plebs like ourselves standing outside the marquee waiting for things to start. We noticed a few people give up and leave, and general sarcasm rippled through those that remained ("when they said it was switch-off time, we didn't think they meant the power").

Kate in position and waiting!

Switch-off itself has gone incredibly well across the UK - far better than most had imagined. In fact, it's been reported today that nearly half of the money earmarked for helping people switch will be handed back by the BBC to the government. As well as my aforementioned geekery it's a process which I can claim a very small part in. Arqiva's engineering work requests all need to be approved by broadcasters, and this very glamorous role has been held by yours truly for a few years now. Numerous transmitters have been shutdown for periods to enable the work to convert them to be ready for the switch, and when particularly large numbers of people have been hit I've needed to contact the relavent local news programme and ask them to mention it to give viewers a bit of warning. I swear the head of news at Meridian must hate me as they've had an awful lot of shutdowns. Finally I schedule regional continuity annoucements to warn viewers to expect disruption. Basically I've been the bringer of bad news for the last three years.

Digit Al switches off analogue.  This is actually how it happened.

Thirsty work, ending eras.

I'd previously seen the Winter Hill analogue switch-off in December 2009 back home in the Wirral. To most normal people it's not a process that looks particularly interesting (although BBC Wales and S4C made a bit of a fuss when Wales went) but there is something quite final and rather sad about the plug being pulled on a method of broadcast that has brought so much television to us over the decades. And lest we forget, television is what brought Kate and I together and for the time being is helping me pay the rent, so it's something quite close to my heart. So two and a bit years later it was London's turn. Predictably there was a lot of media interest in this one, some of it with the usual London-bias (as was pointed out, this isn't the end of analogue - Northern Ireland has that honour in October) but some of it justifiable, given that this is the largest number of people to be switched in one go, and also the birthplace of television. What was less obvious was the sudden outpouring of Ceefax and Teletext nostalgia ("remember bamboozle, lol") when this had been disappearing for years anyway and still has sometime to run in yet-to-switch areas and overnight on BBC Two. 

Here in London, with BBC Two having switched off on 4th April, Channel 4 was the first to go just after midnight with a reappearance of what I'm told was their original testcard, meaning it was the first and last thing to be shown on C4 analogue in London. BBC One followed shortly after with a mention from the continuity announcer that Mark Thompson was flicking the switch - notably making it the first thing he's shut down successfully in his time as Director General. ITV1 was the next to go twenty minutes later after Ladette To Lady, which I don't think I've ever paid so much attention to before. Insiders on one forum claimed a caption was due on ITV1 marking the end of analogue from Crystal Palace but in the heat of the moment didn't happen. Finally Channel 5 - which has always been transmitted from Croydon - disappeared in the middle of a programme at about 0045. And with that slightly abrupt end, analogue was gone in the capital.

The following night, at 9.30pm the suits in the tent started to move outside to watch the lighting of the transmitter. The Arqiva party had assembled a number of people to help mark the historic moment that the capital switched to digital, including legendary broadcaster David Attenborough, legendary scientist Brian Cox, legendary children's TV host Floella Benjamin, legendary executives Greg Dyke and Peter Bazalgette, and presenter Chris Evans. The job of hitting the switch was appropriately given to Attenborough, who had begun his career at the birthplace of television, Alexandra Palace, which was the original London transmitter from 1936.

A countdown was held - 3, 2, 1.....and nothing. The tower remained in darkness. That ripple of sarcasm became general hilarity amongst the public as we wondered whether we were witnessing one of the biggest screw-ups in public relations history. But then the light show began and, to be fair, it was pretty cool to watch. The mist and rain actually added to the effect of the light beams pulsating through the sky. It was just over very quickly, and didn't really merit the description "show", as it was basically an elaborate switch-on routine, followed by leaving the lights on for 90 minutes. They did however miss a trick by not using the opportunity to project the Thundercats logo into the sky.

All in all it was a curiously British occasion. Having made a huge fuss it as an event for people to come along to, visitors were left standing in the rain outside a tent full of people on a corporate jolly. When the show finally began fifteen minutes late it was over pretty quick. As we moved forward to get a better picture of the lit-up mast, someone leant forward over the barriers and shouted "EVANS, YOU WANKER", which rather summed up the evening. The new age of digital broadcasting had arrived in the capital - and somewhat appropriately for this there was a repeat of the light show scheduled the following evening.