Crashing The Pips
The BBC discourages any other sound being broadcast at the same time as the pips; doing so is commonly known as 'crashing the pips'. This was most often referred to on Terry Wogan's show, Wake Up to Wogan, although usually only in jest since the actual event happens rarely. Different BBC Radio stations approach this issue differently. BBC Radio 1 has a more laid-back approach with the pips, the most notable example being The Chris Moyles Show which usually plays the pips over a currently playing song or a jingle 'bed' (background music from a jingle) which climaxes into the jingle after the pips end. Many BBC local radio stations also play the pips over the station's jingle. BBC Radio 4 is stricter. It is an almost entirely speech-based network; incidents at the end of the Today programme regularly cause listeners' complaints.
As a contribution to the Comic Relief's 2005 Red Nose Day, the BBC developed a "pips" ring-tone which can be downloaded.
Bill Bailey's BBC Rave includes the BBC News theme, which incorporates a variant of the pips (though not actually broadcast exactly on the hour). The footage can be seen on his DVD Part Troll.
In the late 1980s Radio 1 featured the pips played over a station jingle during Jakki Brambles' early show and Simon Mayo's breakfast show. This was not strictly crashing the pips as they were not intended to be, or mistaken for, an accurate time signal.
Read more about this topic: Greenwich Time Signal
Famous quotes containing the word crashing:
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)