Greenwich Time Signal 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
BBC Radio Orchestra disbanded in 1991, with the BBC Big Band retained as a full-time ensemble till 1994 when the corporation made the band a freelance unit, whilst allowing it to retain its name and identity. When the BBC Radio Popular Music department was formed in the early 1960s, it inherited both the BBC Revue Orchestra and the BBC Variety Orchestra and immediately began to investigate the possible amalgamation of the two ensembles, which had similar instrumentation and virtually duplicated each other's outputs. Michael Standing, the then head of sound broadcasting at the BBC, suggested creating an orchestra that would form a flexible