🚀 go-pugleaf

Someone made the point that the broadcasters lifeblood in commercial
television are the commercial, a point I agree with and thought sure someone
would have made by this time in the discussion.

I am a little surprised that noone has asked about how networks time the
station breaks...after all, when you have hundreds of local affiliates all
"going to a commercial" simultaneously, you gotta believe there is some
signalling going on. I mean, every station in the nation doesn't have a
dedicated engineer sitting there watching a clock count down and then
pressing his "goto local" button!

I once toured the Public Broadcasting studios in Madison, WI. I seem to
recall that there is in fact a "blip" sent that studio equipment can detect,
(the human eye can, too, if you know where it is and when it will
be coming). It is about as fast as a half an eyeblink, and I believe it is
simply a small white circle (or target) in the lower right corner of the
screen. In my memory of all this, the blip was sent some precise interval
(one second or 5 seconds) before the changeover, and it occurred in the
program before the station break, and in the commercial prior to returning
to the program.

Does anyone know if this system is still in use? Is it only the public
network that uses it or do the commercial ones, too? Is it only for network
station breaks, or do they use it for timing national ads, too? Does it
maybe only occur on scans 526 through 550 or something, so ordinary gear
won't see it? Or maybe it's sent only during retrace and the studio gear
can turn on the beam during retrace if there's anything there? I really don't
recall any of the technical details, but I clearly remember thinking at the
time that *if* video recorders for the home ever became widely used, a
commercial-zapper built around this blip would have widespread appeal.

Does anyone who has ever worked in a studio care to comment? (or is your
non-disclosure agreement still in effect? ;-)




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