Eighteen BBC Local Radio Stations Fall Silent
/Eighteen BBC Local Radio services went off-air recently due to major technical problems around the network.
The stations affected all use the BBC ViLoR system – which connects local radio studios with servers in London rather than use local hard drives for music, audio and studio software.
A total of 33 transmitters on FM, DAB and AM went quiet before stations started rebroadcasting BBC5 live. Shortly afterwards stations reconnected to their transmitters via ISDN but online streams remained on 5 live.
“Technical problems are continuing to affect output at a number of BBC Local Radio stations this morning, including at BBC Three Counties. Engineers are working to fix the problem but at the moment it’s not known how long it will be before normal service resumes.”
BBC Three Counties updated listeners at midday saying they are back on-air locally but unable to play any jingles, songs or recorded voice reports. Phone lines were down across the network but the text-in number worked as normal.
“We’ve been having a couple of technical issues today but our engineers are working hard behind the scenes to resume normal service as soon as possible.”
It's claimed one or more BBC ViLoR radio services on all platforms suffered an outage, resulting from an equipment failure.
The BBC said BT has confirmed that the issue was caused by an engineer carrying out pre-work activities in Oxford where a fibre tray was disturbed at the time of the incident.
