shoshani wrote: 
> I had always presumed that the programming was uniform across all
> frequencies, but I learned that evening that this was not the case! Each
> frequency apparently had its own engineer making transmission decisions,
> and the continuity announcer was evidently given cues as to when to stop
> speaking to permit the fading-out of a programme on one frequency while
> still talking on another.
I was there in the late 1960s, but I suspect nothing much changed for
quite a while after that. There was only one stream for World Service
and each of the networks, of course, but we had transmitter sites all
over the UK and also in remote places like Ascension Island.  Once the
feeds left us they went to the transmitter sites by landline, submarine
cable, or radio relay, and it was then entirely up to the transmitter
engineers what to do with them.  For the foreign language broadcasts
they regularly had to change frequencies and also steer the shortwave
antennas to beam the signal in the right direction for the target
audience, as each of the six networks had to serve multiple language
groups and geographical destinations at different times of the day.  
I think most of the timing that you mention was done strictly by the
clock; the control room had a precision master clock synchonized to GMT,
and all over the building there were subsidiary clocks locked to the
master. And of course the presenters, many of whom also ran their own
control consoles, were pros at this.


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