"Brian Lawrence" wrote:

During the coverage of the
Apollo 8 mission in 1968 at the most critical moment when the astronauts
where about to fire the SPS for the journey home the BBC cut the program
to show Play School !

Since the TEI burn started at 06:10 GMT and AOS followed at 06:25 there would
have been no scheduled programs at that time - certainly not Play School,
which was usually aired at 13:00 on BBC 1 and at 16:20 on BBC 2. The event
happened on Christmas Day too, so schedules might have been different.
However, back then programs didn't usually start until later in the day -
there were no Breakfast shows.

Did a bit of digging - here are the BBC TV Schedules for Christmas Day 1968:

http://www.tvradiobits.co.uk/tellyye...istmas60s2.htm

To summarise BBC 1 started broadcasting at 08:45 with Carol Story, followed
by a news bulletin at 09:15 and then a five-minute Apollo Report at 09:30.

BBC 2 went on air at 09:15 with a 15m Apollo Report. The next programme was
indeed Play School, but that was scheduled for 11:20 - almost two hours
after the brief report and five hours after TEI took place. There was a
second 15m report at 11:55.

There is a footnote that says the Apollo Reports were not listed in the
Radio Times (the BBC's weekly schedule magazine), but were expected to be
shown. There is also a photo of presenter Cliff Michelmore with the Moon
globe.

There is also an interesting article about both BBC and ITV Apollo 11 coverage
at

http://www.tvhistory.btinternet.co.u...rget_moon.html

The ref. to Play School seems to have been a garbled version of a Patrick
Moore anecdote when he said that he was just starting to explain a critical
part of the mission when the Beeb switched to Jackanory (a children's story
programme). The story appeared in the Guardian in July 1999, but the same
story in the Sunday Telegraph (Jan 2001) attributed it to Apollo 8.

--

Brian Lawrence

Wantage, Oxfordshire, UK