BBC News forced off air, temporarily relocates broadcast

BBC News had a total failure of its Broadcasting House news production software OpenMedia prior to the network’s evening news bulletins on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018.

With the crash at around 15:00 BST or 3 p.m. London time, BBC World News and BBC News Channel were forced to roll taped programming from earlier in the day.

Once programming returned, static camera shots and diminished on-air production values were noticed by viewers and serval shows used different studios.

For the network’s 6 p.m. evening bulletin, Fiona Bruce and Mark Easton relocated to BBC’s secondary production center in Millbank.

Due to a technical issue we're currently running recorded programming on our live news channels. We're working hard to resolve this as quickly as possible. The BBC News website is operating normally.

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) October 10, 2018

Bruce and Easton received a police escort for the facility before anchoring the newscast from the recently debuted set of “BBC Politics Live” with a pre-taped view of the normal Broadcasting House newsroom background.

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In a taxi with Fiona Bruce and editor of @BBCNews at 6 heading for Millbank. Studio at BH gone down!! Traffic dreadful. Aagghhh! pic.twitter.com/MjnPDgT5Jp

— Mark Easton (@BBCMarkEaston) October 10, 2018

BBC began rollout of Annova’s OpenMedia earlier this year previously utilizing Associated Press’s ENPS solution.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly used part of another news software program’s name in identifying what caused the technical issues. BBC uses OpenMedia.