Cue Mark - Other - Cue Dots in Television

Cue Dots in Television

In television, a similar idea is used to signal to a control room that a transition of some sort is about to occur on the broadcast (such as a commercial break). The most common type of television cue dot is the IBA style, used around the world, which consists of a small square in the top right corner of the screen, with black and white moving stripes. The other is a proprietary system used principally by the BBC (who do not air commercials). This version is a static square in the top left corner with a white-black-white pattern.

In the early days of television, some stations used a puncher or a scriber on film prints. This was seldom accurate and not all stations used the same five second / one second pattern. Viewers were often treated to distortion just before station breaks in any film that had been around a while. Although the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers attempted to standardize television cues, its efforts went largely unheeded. Indeed, the wide variety of telecine projectors (Eastman Kodak 250 on the high-end and RCA TP-16 on the low-end, for 16mm, and RCA TP-35 on the high-end and General Precision 35 on the low-end, for 35mm) significantly prevented any such standardization.

In the past few decades, the cue dot was used extensively on the UK's ITV and Channel 4 networks as a commercial break was approaching. This was for the benefit of the regional playout centres who would need to play in commercials for their region. Automation and playout servers led to this being phased out and it is now used only for some live presentations, especially those with regional opt-outs or variable ad breaks. The cue dot appears about 1 minute before the break and disappears 5 seconds before the break starts. ITV use a spinning black-and-white ticker in the corner of the screen.

The BBC's main purpose of cue dots was to cue the following programme, either from a studio or from an outside broadcast.

Improvements in talkback and Presfax means that cue dots are rarely used now by the BBC. The prevalence of digital television and the accompanying delays means that the use of cue dots to communicate with outside broadcast units is obsolete.

Cue dots do have some other uses: presentation may be asked to "flash your dots" by an outside broadcast unit so they can confirm that their off-air check feed is the correct one, particularly when they are working on a regional basis. The dots are also used during coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships to warn other broadcasters that the BBC feed will be cutting to an interview intended for the UK audience only, so they should be ready to go to something else.