Greenwich Time Signal a station jingle during Jakki Brambles' early show and Simon Mayo's breakfast show. This was not strictly crashing the pips as they were not intended to be, or mistaken for, an accurate time signal. At 8 am on 17 September 2008, to the surprise of John Humphrys, the day's main presenter on the "Today" programme, and Johnnie Walker, who was standing in for Terry Wogan on Radio 2, the pips went adrift by 6 seconds, and broadcast seven pips rather than six. This was traced to a problem with the pip generator, which was 'repaired' by switching it off and
Greenwich Time Signal as 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