The pips and the last time a country checked its clocks together

The points below about radio time signals are ordered by how much difference they make, not by how often they get repeated.

Time had to be distributed

Domestic clocks drift, and before automatic synchronisation they had to be corrected against something more accurate. Radio time signals, speaking clocks and telephone time services performed that distribution to entire populations at negligible cost.

Setting the clock against the pips was a routine domestic act performed in millions of households. Accurate time was a public utility delivered over the air.

Automatic synchronisation removed the act

Radio-controlled clocks receive coded time from dedicated transmitters, and networked devices synchronise over the internet continuously. The result is that almost every clock a person looks at is now correct without anyone doing anything. That is an unambiguous improvement and it removed one of the few genuinely universal small rituals.

Nobody has needed to know what time it is more precisely than their phone already knows for well over a decade.

Digital broadcast broke the signal it carries

Digital radio and television introduce encoding and buffering delays of, in some cases, several seconds relative to the live event. That makes a broadcast time signal unreliable as a precise reference, even though it is still transmitted.

Broadcasters generally note this, and the pips survive as a scheduling and identity marker rather than a calibration tool. A signal that is now inaccurate is retained because listeners expect it, which is a precise definition of a ritual.

The speaking clock was the other half

Telephone time services provided spoken time on demand and were, in several countries, among the most-dialled numbers for decades. Some still operate, with call volumes a small fraction of their peak, sustained largely by habit and by people without other references. They are periodically threatened with closure and periodically reprieved after public objection.

Look closer and the service costs little and its defenders are attached to something other than the information.

Precise time is now infrastructure nobody sees

Financial trading, telecommunications, power grids and navigation all depend on time synchronised far more accurately than any household needs. Much of that synchronisation depends on satellite navigation signals, which is a recognised single point of failure. Several countries are developing terrestrial backup timing systems specifically to reduce that dependency.

In truth, the distribution of accurate time became more critical and completely invisible at the same moment.

Leap seconds are being retired

Occasional leap seconds have been inserted to keep atomic time aligned with the earth's slightly irregular rotation. They cause well-documented problems for computer systems, and international bodies have agreed to discontinue the practice at a future date. The details and timing of that change are still being worked through, so it should be described as agreed in principle rather than settled in detail.

For a while, civil time is being quietly redefined, and almost nobody will notice.

Everything above, in order of what to do first

1. Time had to be distributed. Domestic clocks drift, and before automatic synchronisation they had to be corrected against something more accurate.
2. Automatic synchronisation removed the act. Radio-controlled clocks receive coded time from dedicated transmitters, and networked devices synchronise over the internet continuously.
3. Digital broadcast broke the signal it carries. Digital radio and television introduce encoding and buffering delays of, in some cases, several seconds relative to the live event.
4. The speaking clock was the other half. Telephone time services provided spoken time on demand and were, in several countries, among the most-dialled numbers for decades.
5. Precise time is now infrastructure nobody sees. Financial trading, telecommunications, power grids and navigation all depend on time synchronised far more accurately than any household needs.
6. Leap seconds are being retired. Occasional leap seconds have been inserted to keep atomic time aligned with the earth's slightly irregular rotation.

The takeaway

A whole country used to correct its clocks at the same moment, out loud. Now every clock is right and no one has to do anything at all.

Nobody decided to stop. It simply stopped being worth the effort.