Mistakes
The James Whale Radio Show (Live Sound Loss) - 1990
During a broadcast of late night show 'The James Whale Radio Show', something apparently trips out allowing you to see both lighting and sound disappear live on air, followed by Whale mouthing about the fact his microphone has gone and a lot of arm flailing. Initially they attempt to cut to a pre-recorded letters segment, but with it still being devoid of sound a swift decision to go to a break instead is made. After the end of the break, they attempt to re-run the letters segment. Initially still silent, with two different sound fault captions, the latter only fading up at the same time as sound is finally restored.
TTTV Next Mistake - 1995
This happened after the premiere of the Return of the 4 Musketeers on ITV in 1995. Everything seemed normal, until a promo for the film Die Hard came on. Although its not very obvious on this video file, as well as the sound disappearing, the picture has taken on a judder. The junction continues to get even messier as the next slide comes on...
Channel 3 North East - ITN VT Clock - 1996
CITV Watership Down - 2000
Whats the best time to tell everyone whats going to be on tomorrow? During the middle of a programme of course!! This mistake came up in the last 5 minutes of an episode of Watership Down, where someone accidentally switches on the audio of the studio feed, and we can just about hear Tom and Andrea rehearsing their script (or one can only assume that's what they're doing). Of course, there was no apology made at the end... possibly just hoping no one had noticed!
BBC News Ending - 2001
TTTV (Picture Fault) - 2001
BBC One Power Failure - 30/6/2001
Long before everything was outsourced to dedicated playout centres, all the BBC channels were fed out from Television Centre in London - leaving quite a big point of failure in the broadcast chain. In proof of this, on Saturday the 30th June, at 9.22, after a failure with both the main power and backup systems, the BBC effectively ceased all broadcasting for a short time. A power cut at Television centre in London knocked out all BBC television broadcasts for around 20 minutes. Here is the file showing what happened when BBC1 finally came back on.
BBC Two Power Failure - 30/6/2001
Home and Away Aspect Ratio Mistake - 2/8/2001
Yorkshire 2001 - Mistake
Yorkshire 2001 - Mistake 2
BBC1 Comedy Mistake - 2002
BBC1 NE and Cumbria - 2002
On the 6th of June 2002, BBC1 in the North East opted out of the network to repeat 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet', which was missed by many first time round after lightning knocked out the Pontop Pike transmitter. Not being used to opting out in this slot for some time in the North East, when they came to playing out the regular ident into the 10 O' Clock news, things went a bit wrong!
Calendar - 2002
CBBC Channel Advert - 2002
CBBC Sheeep Mistake - 2002
BBC1 Wallace and Gromit - 2002
Over Christmas 2002, the BBC started to air a load of new Wallace and Gromit short films. This mistake happened leading into one of them. The ident played as normal. It then stayed on screen as the programme music began playing in the background. A few seconds later, A caption was hastily thrown up. I managed to catch the end of it, with some of the music over the breakdown caption, then the announcer saying we can now return to Best Inventions... yes, completely missing the Wallace and Gromit segment that night! Although the looks may have changed several times, the BBC were still rocking those same breakdown tracks they'd had for years.
Super RTL Banner - 2003
There's nothing broadcasters love more than to ruin programmes with annoying banners and other screen junk. Nice to see this practice backfire on the German channel Super RTL then. Their banner appears, but the advertising text is nowhere to be seen. Eventually, the top half of their web address crawls onscreen.
ITV News Breakdown - 2003
UK Gold Breakdown - 2003
ITV NC Markets - 2003
Sky Sports Breakdown - 2003
Calendar (Report Cut Short) - 2004
S4C Election - Graphic Error - 2010
BBC Four (Breakdown) - 2017
BBC One Wales (Drone Racers Mistake) - 1/1/2018
A slightly bumpy junction around the first Drone Racers ident on BBC One Wales. After the end of the New Year 2018 programme, an initial trailer is played out by Wales, followed by a clean playout of the new Wales branded Drone Racer ident. After this they crash back in to the network feed partway through the next network trailer, before giving us a brief glimpse of the generic BBC blocks. Start off 2018 as you mean to go on!
BBC Two NI (ECP Mistake) - 1/1/2018
E4 (ECP Mistake) - 2018
BBC One (Continuity Mistake) - 2018
BBC One Scotland (Continuity Mistake) - 2018
How the same BBC News at Ten mistake went out in the nations varied. In Wales and Northern Ireland, they used the clean feed so after their own announcements were able to cut to the news intro unaffected. Scotland cut to the dirty network feed, similar to the approach used in the English regions, resulting in a brief flash of the network ident and them getting the tailend of the botched network continuity after their own link.
BBC Two/News Channel (Sound Error) - 2019
BBC Two leads into a regular 9am News Channel simulcast on May 14th, only for faults to become immediately apparent. Although the headline bed plays, no audio from the studio can be heard as a result of sound desk problems. After several moments of even the headlines freezing, the channel crashes back to a pre-record from an hour earlier, still during Breakfast at that point. The problem would be fully resolved with a studio switch a short while later.
ITV (Weather Breakdown) - 2019
A short breakdown during the evening national weather on ITV. In the middle of the forecast, the picture freezes, before dropping back to a silent ITV breakdown slide, at least in Scotland. After showing this for a short period, the forecast continues as normal. Although this was recorded from STV, no local breakdown slide was inserted by the Scottish station.
ITV (ITV Creates Mistake) - 2019
The normally faultless switch from one week's ITV Creates look to the next is missed at 6am on October 28th (possibly due to clock changes over the weekend). Resulting in an announcement still heralding the new look from Kochi Kochi for the week, but over the artwork from NEON from the previous week.
BBC One Scotland (Promo Mistake) - Christmas 2019
BBC One NI (Timing Mistake) - 2020
Someone in Northern Ireland plays one trailer less than they should in an afternoon junction, resulting in BBC One Northern Ireland joining the programme feed too early. As is normal in that situation, the gap ends up filled with the BBC blocks holding pattern. The other nations all hit this junction correctly.
BBC One NI (BBC Two) - 2020
BBC One (Politics Mistake) - Christmas 2020
Dave (Opening Mistake) - 2020
An error on Dave where something isn't triggered quite right on the automation system. The opening titles to a show start as normal (here for one of their many staple repeats of primetime, QI), before swiftly crashing into the next slide graphic for a brief second devoid of any text. This same mistake was present on several UKTV channels around this time.
BBC Scotland (Playout Issue) - 2021
From February 14th 2021, playout of the show 'Seven Days' fails. With the channel instead dropping to frozen stills from the previous junction's trailers without any announcements for several minutes. Before eventually managing to pop up an onscreen caption. After several more minutes of frozen trailer, the planned programme was dropped completely.
BBC World News (Duke of Edinburgh Coverage Join) - 2021
Dave (Fault) - 2021
Shortly after 10pm on 19th August, a playout fault hit some, although not all, UKTV channels. After a brief glitch at the end of a promo on Dave, the feed dropped to black for several minutes. Announcements and onscreen graphics continued, before the program 'Not Going Out' carried on as normal. Highlights at 47 seconds and 1 minute 20 seconds.
E4Xtra (Continuity Overlaid) - 2022
With the channel being run on a shoestring budget, the first day of going from 4Music to E4Xtra was not a particularly clean affair. In some places the channel had been promoted as starting at 9am, with other places advertising 7am. In the end the branding first appeared at 7, but the channel still shows music-style programming daily until 9. Not everything had been queued up well either, with continuity clearly intended for the previous music playing over the top of the E4Xtra ident which still came with its own pre-recorded generic announcement. Start as you mean to go on and all that!
