The Weekend Breakfast Show with Dev begins with the pips at 06:00, and they sometimes feature on the hour at other points during the show, and Gemma Cairney's Early Breakfast Show begins with the pips. Zane Lowe's Masterpieces, the playing of an album in its entirety, is begun with pips, and they also feature at 19:00 on Fridays to signify the start of the weekend. Chris Moyles continues to use the pips at the beginning of his show on Radio X. As most stations only air the pips on the hour, The Chris Moyles Show was the only show where the pips were broadcast on the half-hour. The pips were used on BBC Radio 1 during The Chris Moyles Show at 06:30 just after the news, 09:00 as part of the Tedious Link feature, 10В am (at the end of the show) and often before Newsbeat. On BBC Radio 2, the pips are used at 07:00, 08:00 and 17:00 on weekdays, at 07:00 and 08:00 on Saturdays and at 08:00 and 09:00 on Sundays. This is caused by the scheduling of the afternoon play on Saturday and the omnibus edition of The Archers on Sunday. No time signal is broadcast at 15:00 on Saturdays and at 10:00 and 11:00 on Sundays. However, the chimes have been suspended temporarily for the duration of the refurbishment of the clock mechanism. Normally, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the pips every hour except at 18:00 and 00:00 and at 22:00 on Sundays (at the start of the Westminster Hour) when they were replaced by the Westminster chimes of Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster. The pips are available to BBC radio stations every 15 minutes but except in rare cases, they are only broadcast on the hour, usually before news bulletins or news programmes. Up to 1972 the pips were of equal length and confusion arose as to which was the final pip, hence the last pip is now of extended length. The signal is generated at each quarter-hour and has on occasion been broadcast in error. ДЄlthough normally broadcast only on the hour by BBC domestic radio, BBC World Service use the signal at other times as well. Although 'negative' leap seconds can also be used to make the year shorter, this has never happened in practice. Before leap seconds were conceived, the final pip was the same length as the others. The possibility of an extra pip for the leap second thus justifies the final pip being longer than the others, so that it is always clear which pip is on the hour.

In this case the first pip occurs at 23:59:55 (as usual) and there is a sixth short pip at 23:59:60 (the leap second) followed by the long pip at 00:00:00.

When a leap second occurs (exactly one second before midnight UTC), it is indicated by a seventh pip. The actual moment when the hour changes вЂ“ the 'on-time marker' вЂ“ is at the very beginning of the last pip. Each pip is a 1 k Hz tone (about a fifth of a semitone above musical B5) the first five of which last a tenth of a second each, while the final pip lasts half a second.

There are six pips (short beeps) in total, which occur on each of the 5В seconds leading up to the hour and on the hour itself. Problems playing this file? See media help.

Laptop making beeping noise