Canada’s 84-year radio time check has stopped because of accuracy concerns
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I believe RTÉ radio (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) in Ireland still broadcasts the Angelus - another comforting familiar sound.
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I haven't either (before CBC posted about it) but I'm younger and never really cared for radio. So that's more on me. If Non-Canadian Ars Technica is picking it up. That alone should give a quick pause as to the significance of it. And the article provides a great background for people like us who haven't heard of it to go "huh that's neat... who knew?"
Really all that goes to show is that there are a lot of things orgs like CBC do which are expensive and shouldn't just be torn down because of costs... but that's me getting political and I will stop here.
Edit to clarify:
Expensive as in "I don't want it and I'll get rid of anything I don't want because I don't see the value in its existence". This is a political expensive. Not a practical one.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Similar to how New York radio station 1010 WINS stopped using its iconic teletype background sound. sigh
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Well, actually, this has changed over the years, because at one time (cut from the story for length/relevance), they had to cut out the 10 seconds of silence entirely. The silence was tripping up a broadcast system that, hearing the complete silence, tried to correct for what it perceived as signal loss.
I've also seen other people cite "Following," but, being a Yankee, I don't feel entirely comfortable setting cannon, so I have removed the reference.
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I struggle to imagine something cheaper to produce than about 20 seconds of pre-recorded time signal information a couple times a day. Cost was definitely not the reason to cut this.
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The message says what time it will be, then there's a very faint metronome, then the long dash. Then follows a very short silence (maybe a second, probably less) before the intro music to the news.
Or I guess that's all past tense now.
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Listening to it brings tears to my eyes as it brings back very fond memories of sitting around the breakfast table with mom, dad and sis on Sunday mornings. Eat breakfast, listen to the news and discuss what's going on in the world.
Does anybody do that anymore?
"The beginning of the long dash, following 10 seconds of silence, indicates 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time"
Does anybody do that anymore?
"The beginning of the long dash, following 10 seconds of silence, indicates 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time"
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Should've put that in scare quotes.
"Expensive" as in "I don't want it and I'll get rid of anything I don't want because I don't see the value in its existence".
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
The headline literally says, "stopped because of accuracy concerns". It's not a matter of value, it's a matter of physics.
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Boo. Look, it wasn't that useful, but I liked hearing it when I was in the car listening to CBC - it's how I know (knew? was reminded to check?) how much my car clock has drifted. It didn't have to be all THAT accurate.
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Growing up on the west coast I know this as "exactly 10:00" not "Exactly 1:00". Nice to see a bit of Canadiana on Ars. Shame to see this go in principle but in practice it's been years since it was relevant.
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Will nobody think of those poor, poor puppers?!? Those poor, poor snackless puppers!
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In light of this story, Enquiring Minds Want To Know: Were you late?
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Grew up in a small town and we had a clock tower that used to chime like those old grandfather clocks did. Except it was done with large megaphone style speakers so you could hear it for a couple miles. Every 15 minutes was 4 gongs and the hour was a series of gongs followed by single gongs to count the hours.
As kids we knew when it was time to head home by listening for those gongs. And hoping the count stopped short so we’d have another hour or two to play.
I remember getting a tour of it as a kid and they explained it was set to a radio time signal. This was obviously the signal they were referring to.
As kids we knew when it was time to head home by listening for those gongs. And hoping the count stopped short so we’d have another hour or two to play.
I remember getting a tour of it as a kid and they explained it was set to a radio time signal. This was obviously the signal they were referring to.
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I have context to what I said.
"but that's me getting political and I will stop here."
There's a certain terrible politician in Canada complaining about CBC being expensive and campaigning on it's removal and its working.
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"The world will end at midnight tonight, 12:30 in Newfoundland."
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It really did matter, in wartime. And for a long while thereafter. Every second of error between your marine chronometer and the true time will screw up your sextant-and-charts calculations by a quarter of a mile. After a few weeks at sea, being able to pick up a Canadian time signal might mean the difference between catching a slowly accumulating navigational error 180 miles before you try to make landfall in Halifax, versus getting shipwrecked on Sable Island. Or, perhaps, between being right on top of the German U-boat that the patrol plane called in, with your depth charges at the ready, versus being in its periscope sights.
Cost has nothing to do with it. They're cutting it because the entire point of the Time Signal is lost if you have latency in the network. That was no trouble at all when it was all AM (or, later, FM) analog broadcast. It became a problem when they started bouncing the signal off satellites, relaying it through the internet, etc. because now everyone's listening is staggered by a few seconds, or tens of seconds.
A time signal that can't be trusted due to network latency is worse than no time signal at all, if you're among the group of people who actually need a time signal.
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Growing up, every Sunday I'd stand by the radio with a portable clock, and manually set the time on it to CBC's time signal broadcast -- then take it around the house and re-sync all the other clocks to it.
And I know I'm definitely not the only one who did this.
Sometime around 1995 I switched to using NTP to keeping a computer clock synched instead, and I'd set the portable clock from that at a time of my own choosing, and use that to synchronize all the clocks in the house.
I'd say I'll miss the time signal, but the truth is, I've ignored it for almost 30 years, so I probably won't miss it at all.
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I always used to get frustrated by those Toronto-centric CBC head-office types. They'd make a shout out to Newfoundland, but often our programming would be off by hours from when they said it would air in Toronto, especially if it was a live broadcast.
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As someone who goes out of their way to sync all their devices to the NRC's NTP servers (time.nrc.ca) and visits the official time page probably more than an individual needs to, the first time I heard this sound was the coverage last week it was ending. It was really weird reading all this nostalgia for this sound and didn't even know it was a thing. I know growing up and living in Quebec, I miss a number of things that are declared quintessentially Canadian, and I guess this is just one more thing.
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Perhaps you should read the article you're commenting on? It seems to be nothing like what you've decided it is.
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Wasn't their fault; it was up to the Newfoundland leadership setting time zones for the province a bit weird. Atlantic was always an hour later, which is pretty simple to do.
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There was on-line chatter that The Former Guy's 2019 budget - which proposed reducing National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) funding - could result in shutting down WWV / WWVH. It didn't happen.
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Canada entered WWII long before the German invasion of Poland. We have a reputation for playing the long game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canadian_Conspiracy
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NL isn't the only one, there are a few around the world. There are even one each of 45 minutes and 15 minutes.
https://www.worldtimeserver.com/learn/unusual-time-zones/
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I remember the time signal from back in the 1980s -- I'd be listening to the Quirks & Quarks science show on CBC radio, then the 1:00pm time signal (for my Eastern time zone), followed by the (slightly hokey) Royal Canadian Air Farce comedy show. (If I have it all correct in memory!)
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If this is supposed to be an accurate time signal that is being published by the national standards setting body, having it unpredictably delayed by a few seconds is NOT acceptable. Simultaneously broadcasting a signal, even a couple beeps, is neither cheap, nor easy across a span of 7500Km. Even if it has cultural significance, it's still the official time broadcast of Canada.
People and industry who rely on it for, you know, actually setting the time, will expect it to be accurate. The NRC still does broadcast the signal via more reliable means such as telephone and shortwave, but doing it over terrestrial FM radio is simply impractical given the way that the Internet and satellite is now a part of the backbone of the CBC's broadcasting system.
It's not worth setting up a national system using something like the Trans Canada Microwave simply for time broadcasts to ensure timely, accurate delivery, so yeah, it IS an issue of cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_Canada_Microwave
If using something like using terrestrial radio was easy and cheap for indefinitely distributing an accurate time signal across a vast geographic area, protocols like NTP and GPS would never have been invented.
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This is (perhaps unsurprisingly?) a common thing governments around the world have independently implemented.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock
Interesting your Civic had the ability to tune into a radio time signal. I've seen it most commonly in wristwatches, or alarm clocks meant for business travellers.
That article I linked links to anther entry that explains the format for the timecode used by CHU. The tone followed by silence is apparently NOT a proprietary thing sequence just made up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_103_modem
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They were saying this "program" was the longest continuous radio broadcast on the continent — bar none. Every god given day for over eighty-four years. Sheesh.
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No, budget shenanigans aside, the US has treaty obligations to operate WWV for parts of Canada, while non-CBC Canadian timekeeping stations provide service to parts of Alaska.
Also, the radio version of the WWV isn’t streamed, or at least not as a timekeeping service. That’s what time.gov, amongst others, is for.
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The "radio time signal" might have been the official short-wave radio time broadcast station CHU, not the CBC network. CHU, like the U.S.'s WWV and WWVH, transmits time signals that are much easier for an electronic receiver to extract. CHU is still going strong without any buffering delays, unlike the CBC time program, although I understand it's difficult or impossible to receive in Western Canada.
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I mean, theoretically you can determine pretty easily whether a particular broadcast event is being done live at the quoted time in the Eastern Time zone, or if it's time shifted to the quoted time in the local zone. If they say 1pm, 2:30 in Newfoundland, it's a live broadcast, and you can expect it to be 2pm Atlantic, noon Central, 11am Mountain, and 10am Pacific. If they say 1pm, 1:30 in Newfoundland, then it's time shifted, and it should be 1pm local everywhere except Newfoundland, because for some reason Newfoundland would never time shift programming by the half hour to match their clocks.
Of course, you're certainly right about CBC management being completely Toronto-centric in general, and if you ever hear something, unless they specifically say it's somewhere else, you can assume the GTA.
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Might be generation as well. I'm Québécois, and SRC (French CBC) radio was on at the table, and I remember the signal. Maybe your parents tuned to another radio station?
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I guess in Newfoundland the Doomsday Clock is currently 12:28.30
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Nah, because of the timezone offset, Doomsday already came and went for Newfoundland. It doesn't exist any more. In which province do you think Americans meet their girlfriends?
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