Greenwich Time Signal Greenwich Time Signal 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 to mark the precise start of each hour. Their utility in calibration is diminishing as digital broadcasting entails time lags. 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
BBC Radio London was launched, three years before commercial radio for Greater London in the guise of LBC. An additional medium wave frequency was allocated on 1457 kHz (206 metres) from Brookman's Park. 95.3 soon changed to 94.9. BBC Radio London was the local station for the capital, although in the early days it relied heavily on news reports from other stations in the BBC network and often shared programming with BBC Radio 2. It took on a fairly lively sound and featured (as it does to this day) extensive traffic reports, phone-in programmes — it pioneered the daily phone-in in the UK