posted on Jul, 25 2008 @ 06:46 PM
I only discovered this 'Vrillon' broadcast a few days ago while poring over some old threads on a forum on another website.
I found an MP3 of the audio recording (there's a few of them knocking about on the web). To my knowledge, and that of just about everyone else that
has an opinion, no recording of the picture exists; but all accounts of this incident state that it was only the sound that was affected and the
picture stayed normal throughout. I have listened to it a few times - can't get it out of my bloody head, actually - and I've concluded that the
only other signal you hear whilst Vrillon is saying his piece, is that of the TV station, not mixed in with other TV and radio signals as most think.
The ITV station was Southern, the ITV franchise-operator for the south of England. This is what I think you can hear besides Vrillon's message:
- The News is ongoing when the 'rogue' transmission kicks in. You hear a bump and the news audio goes to almost silence. Cue Vrillon;
- The broadcast audio that viewers should be hearing, kind-of 'fights back' amongst all the 'tuning-a-radio' noise when the News is over;
- There is a commercial break. If you listen carefully you can make out an advert for a cat food called '9 Lives';
- Vrillon finishes speaking and the rhythmic electronic, haunting bass-noise gets louder. A trailer for another programme is played. You can hear
someone saying 'You could have fooled me!';
- An acoustic guitar 'jingle'. This is the ident music that was used by Southern Television. It would have been accompanied by Southern's
'compass' ident-logo;
- The Looney Tunes music. This was the programme that came on after the News. It was commonplace for BBC and ITV to show cartoons as fillers in
those days, and most of those were Looney Tunes.
The version of the broadcast that I listened to had some bits added to it. One of them was the Southern continuity announcer, coming on after the
cartoon and announcing: "We understand that some viewers in the region are experiencing a breakthrough in sound. We're sorry about this, and are
doing everything we can to rectify the fault."