Do We Still Need the Pips?

Seriously...

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.1 • 885 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To mark the centenary of the Greenwich Time Signal on the BBC, Paddy O'Connell asks the unaskable - Do We Still Need the Pips?

First broadcast at 9.30pm on Feb the 5th 1924, the six pips of the Greenwich Time Signal have become synonymous with Radio 4. But today digital broadcasting has rendered this time signal delayed and inaccurate. Plus their immovable presence can cause accidents on-air, and no-one wants to crash the Pips. So after 100 years, should Radio 4 just get rid of them? What is the point of a time signal in 2024 anyway?

Paddy O'Connell looks back across a century of organised beeps, and meets the people who listen to, broadcast and sometimes crash in to the Pips to find out what we really think about these six little characters. With interviews including Mishal Husain, Robin Ince & Brian Cox, Jane Steel, Richard Hoptroff, Jon Holmes and David Rooney.

Produced by Luke Doran. Original music by Ed Carter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box.
0:05.0	The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from.
0:09.0	And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.0	The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape.
0:12.5	The IRA inmates who found a way.
0:14.5	I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path
0:19.5	through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history.
0:25.0	The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them.
0:28.5	Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	BBC Sounds, BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:39.0	Welcome to Seriously from BBC Radio 4.
0:42.0	I'm Vanessa Kasule. If you love unique documentaries,
0:46.8	this is the podcast for you. Each week you'll find two new episodes to discover. Here
0:52.4	comes something unusual, charming, and seriously fascinating. There that noise. The Greenwich time signal or GTS more commonly known as the Pips. Six little precise markers of time, each a 1 kilohertz tone.
1:17.0	They've been with us now for 100 years, nearly as long as the BBC itself. But what do we think of these little beeps and do we still need them?
1:30.0	Little dots, Musical dots.
1:33.0	There we are, we've come round the pips for nine o'clock.
1:36.0	Five little short pips, they're all silver,
1:38.0	and the last pip is fatter than the others.
1:41.0	In a funny sort of way, they've got a bit of morse-cud to them.
1:45.0	Blips!
1:47.0	Yeah.
	...

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