1 of 1- RadioActive
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The Stupidest Radio Story You'll Read Today
Many here are probably familiar with the countdown to 1 PM time tones that air every single day on CBC Radio 1. You might say they're so regular, you could set your watch to them.
In Britain, one of the BBC's stations, Radio 4, has essentially been doing the same kind of thing for almost a century. So when those "pips" appeared an astounding 15 minutes late, some listeners went bananas. Outrage is the latest flavour of every day on the Internet and this seemingly minor offense was greeted by a typically oversized response, with one listener describing the late time check as "unholy."
It even led to a major article in one of Britain's famed newspapers.
Radio 4 listeners left confused after 9am pips sound 15 minutes late
There's still no firm explanation of what happened, or why 9 o'clock was delayed until 9:15, but I'm assured that somehow the world carried on and that time - which waits for no one - managed to correct itself.
The History of the BBC Time Pips
The History of Gladys Knight & The Pips
- RadioAaron
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Re: The Stupidest Radio Story You'll Read Today
Regarding the CBC 1pm signal, I've been wondering lately how accurate they are in the world of digital audio routing and STLs.
The NRC still runs an analog phone line you can call and get it precisely. 613-745-1576
- RadioActive
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Re: The Stupidest Radio Story You'll Read Today
I remember reading somewhere that CFTR's time tone used to annoy the hell out of CFRB for some reason, which used to do the same thing at the top of every hour. As far as I know, 680 is still the only one using it now in this market. That may be because the rest of them, being talk stations, always overshoot the exact time and it would sound bad if they kept missing it.
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Thread Starter- Peter the K
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Re: The Stupidest Radio Story You'll Read Today
In this digital world, I wouldn't expect absolute accuracy from any source.
Just for fun, I set my computer's clock to the NRC's NNTP time server, then called the number.
On the first call, the announced time (still courtesy of the late Harry Mannis) was off by one second.
On the second call, the announced time was off by about half a second. Probably delays from the phone systems. But hey, when was the last time anyone really needed atomic-accurate time?
But it still reminds me of when the only reasonably accurate source of time was to fire up my parents' old tube radio and tune in WWV or CHU and how "magical" it all seemed to be.