The Greenwich Time Signal (GTS), popularly known as the pips, is a series of six

short tones broadcast at one-second intervals by many BBC Radio stations. The pips
were introduced in 1924 and have been generated by the BBC since 1990[1] to mark
the precise start of each hour. Their utility in calibration is diminishing as
digital broadcasting entails time lags.

Contents
1 Structure
2 Usage
3 Accuracy
4 History
5 Crashing the pips
6 Technical problems
7 Similar time signals elsewhere
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
Structure

Greenwich Time Signal

MENU0:00
The first five pips and 1 beep
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There are six pips (short beeps) in total, which occur on each of the 5 seconds
leading up to the hour and on the hour itself. Each pip is a 1 kHz tone (about
halfway between musical B5 and C6) the first five of which last a tenth of a second
each, while the final pip lasts half a second. The actual moment when the hour
changes � the "on-time marker" � is at the very beginning of the last pip.[2]

When a leap second occurs (exactly one second before midnight UTC), it is indicated
by a seventh pip. In this case the first pip occurs at 23:59:55 (as usual) and
there is a sixth short pip at 23:59:60 (the leap second) followed by the long pip
at 00:00:00.[3] The possibility of an extra pip for the leap second thus justifies
the final pip being longer than the others, so that it is always clear which pip is
on the hour. Before leap seconds were conceived, the final pip was the same length
as the others.[4] Although "negative" leap seconds can also be used to make the
year shorter, this has never happened in practice.[5][6]

Although normally broadcast only on the hour by BBC domestic radio, BBC World
Service use the signal at other times as well. The signal is generated at each
quarter-hour and has on occasion been broadcast in error.[citation needed]

Up to 1972 the pips were of equal length and confusion arose as to which was the
final pip, hence the last pip was of extended length

Usage
The pips are available to BBC radio stations every 15 minutes but except in rare
cases, they are only broadcast on the hour, usually before news bulletins or news
programmes. On BBC Radio 4, the pips are broadcast every hour except at 18:00 and
00:00 and at 22:00 on Sundays (at the start of the Westminster Hour) when they are
replaced by the Westminster chimes of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster. No time
signal is broadcast at 15:00 on Saturdays and at 10:00 and 11:00 on Sundays. This
is caused by the scheduling of the afternoon play on Saturday and the omnibus
edition of The Archers on Sunday. On BBC Radio 2, the pips are used at 07:00,
08:00, 17:00 and 19:00 on weekdays, at 07:00 and 08:00 on Saturdays and at 08:00
and 09:00 on Sundays.

The pips were used on Radio 1 during The Chris Moyles Show at 06:30 just after the
news, 09:00 as part of the Tedious Link feature, 10 am (at the end of the show) and
often before Newsbeat. As most stations only air the pips on the hour, The Chris
Moyles Show was the only show where the pips were broadcast on the half-hour. Chris
Moyles continues to use the pips at the beginning of his show on Radio X. Zane
Lowe's Masterpieces, the playing of an album in its entirety, is begun with pips,
and they also feature at 19:00 on Fridays to signify the start of the weekend and
at 16:00 on Sundays to mark the start of The Official Chart Show. The Weekend
Breakfast Show with Dev begins with the pips at 06:00, and they sometimes feature
on the hour at other points during the show, and Gemma Cairney's Early Breakfast
Show begins with the pips. Dev's previous Early Breakfast Show also featured the
pips at the beginning, and on the half-hour/hour at other points, particularly at
06:00 before or after the "I'm Here All Week" track. The pips are also used at
19:00 on Saturday evenings at the start of Radio 1's 12-hour simulcast with digital
station BBC Radio 1Xtra.

BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio Five Live do not currently feature the Greenwich Time
Signal in their scheduled programming.

The BBC World Service broadcasts the pips every hour.

Pips can also be heard on many BBC Local Radio stations although their use is up to
the discretion of individual stations. A rare quarter-hour Greenwich Time Signal
can be heard at 05:15 weekdays on Wally Webb's programme on six BBC Local Radio
stations in the east of England, as part of his "sychronised cup of tea" feature.

In 1999, pip-like sounds were incorporated into the themes written by composer
David Lowe to introduce BBC Television News programmes. They are still used today
on BBC One, BBC World News and BBC News.

The BBC does not allow the pips to be broadcast except as a time signal. Radio
plays and comedies which have fictional news programmes use various methods to
avoid playing the full six pips, ranging from simply fading in the pips to a
version played on On the Hour in which the sound was made into a small tune between
the pips. The News Quiz also featured a special Christmas pantomime edition where
the pips went missing, and the problem was avoided there by only playing individual
pips and not the whole set. The 2012 project Radio Reunited, however, did use the
pips not as a time signal, but simply to commemorate 90 years of BBC Radio.

Accuracy
The pips for national radio stations and some local radio stations are timed
relative to UTC, from an atomic clock in the basement of Broadcasting House
synchronised with the National Physical Laboratory's Time from NPL and GPS. On
other stations, the pips are generated locally from a GPS-synchronised clock.

The BBC compensates for the time delay in both broadcasting and receiving
equipment, as well as the time for the actual transmission. The pips are timed so
that they are accurately received on long wave as far as 160 kilometres (100 mi)
from the Droitwich AM transmitter, which is the distance to Central London.

As a pre-IRIG and pre-NTP time transfer and transmission system, the pips have been
a great technological success. In modern times, however, time can be transferred to
systems with CPUs and operating systems by using BCD or some Unix Time variant.

Newer digital broadcasting methods have introduced even greater problems for the
accuracy of use of the pips. On digital platforms such as DVB, DAB, satellite and
the internet, the pips�although generated accurately�are not heard by the listener
exactly on the hour. The encoding and decoding of the digital signal causes a
delay, of usually between 2 and 8 seconds. In the case of satellite broadcasting,
the travel time of the signal to and from the satellite adds about another 0.25
seconds.