Why 6 Music gatecrashed The Archers

More on BBC 6 Music's brief invasion of Radio 4 last night with The Undertones' Wednesday Week, which had Twitter all of a flutter. Apparently it was all 6 Music DJ Marc Riley's fault for living in Manchester. Sort of. The technical hitch was caused by someone pressing the wrong button – or something like that – as the digital station was switching its output from a studio in London to Manchester for Riley's 7pm show, according Steve Bowbrick, the Radio 4 blog editor . In Bowbrick's blog, Diana Speed, the Radio 4 announcer on duty at the time of the glitch, provides a more technical explanation: "R4 Network lost for 2'23" when 6MUSIC was transmitted on our six platforms on the Network Switcher. This was due to a mistake in monitoring when the Control Room did the switch for 6MUSIC from Western House to Manchester at 1900 and instead placed 6MUSIC on our output. I was unaware of loss of network because we monitor desk output in Con [continuity] and that was going out as normal. Apology was made at the end of the programme."