National Research Council Time Signal

rdf:langString National Research Council Time Signal

rdf:langString The National Research Council Time Signal is Canada's longest running radio program. Heard every day since November 5, 1939, shortly before 13:00 Eastern Time across the CBC Radio One network, it lasts between 15 and 60 seconds, ending exactly at 13:00. During standard time, the signal is at 13:00 Eastern Standard Time and during Daylight Saving Time, the signal is at 13:00 Eastern Daylight Saving Time. The signal is also heard on some stations of the Ici Radio-Canada Première network at 12:00 ET daily, particularly in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces. The signal consists of a series of 300 ms "pips" of an sine wave tone, each one starting at the top of each UTC second, up to ten seconds before the hour, followed by silence, and then a one-second-long 800 Hz tone to mark the top of the hour. The CBC time signal is typically delayed by about 300 ms with respect to the CHU time signal, because each CBC radio station receives the actual time signal from Ottawa by satellite. One of the first announcers of what was then the Dominion Observatory Time Signal on CBC was Lorne Greene, while he was a staff announcer at CBO. The current spoken header, as announced by one of CBC Radio's promotional voices, is as follows: The National Research Council official time signal. The beginning of the long dash indicates exactly one o'clock, Eastern (Standard/Daylight Saving) Time. In different time zones, the local time and time zone is used instead. This header is usually spoken over the initial pips. As of May 2011, the length of the silence has been reduced to six seconds, with a soft click at the beginning of each second during the silence. At the top of many other hours, and at the discretion of each station, a one-second tone is sounded, but the hour itself is not necessarily announced.