Three days after Tucson’s Super Bowl blunder, British football fans have also been hit by an unwelcome change of viewing. But rather than pornography, they received a particularly ill-timed commercial break thanks to a broadcaster’s dumb reliance on technology.

To set the scene for those not familiar with British sports broadcasting, the match involved neighboring rivals Liverpool and Everton (the loser being eliminated from a tournament) and aired on ITV, a major network roughly equivalent to ABC or CBS. The game having been scoreless in the regular 90 minutes, it went into a 30 minute extra time period. With just two minutes left and still no goals, the game seemed on the brink of a penalty shoot-out where Liverpool would have been heavily favored to win.

Unfortunately at this moment ITV viewers saw their picture suddenly switch to a commercial break. Different local outlets returned to the game at different speeds, but many viewers were midway through a third commercial before their screens cut back to the football… just in time to discover they had missed a dramatic winning goal from Everton.

ITV is still investigating the precise reasons for the blunder, but it appears an automated playout system is responsible. This means channels automatically switch to commercials at a designated time, reducing the need for human intervention. The problem is that this system is only designed to work during prerecorded programming and should have been disabled for a live sports broadcast where timings are unpredictable.

Whatever the fault, ITV’s control rooms appeared to go completely haywire after the incident. After the game’s conclusion the channel showed the commercial break again in full, then returned to the stadium midway through an interview with the goal scorer. Once the game announcers signed off, the channel aired a silent logo for several minutes then went to the scheduled evening news bulletin midway through the first report with the anchors apparently unaware they had not been on air.

While things could have been worse (had this happened during a tournament final or a major international game it’s little exaggeration to say minor rioting could have been on the cards), fan response has been understandably hostile. Some fans have even complained to the government minister responsible for broadcasting. Ironically that man, Andy Burnham, is an Everton supporter.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm under Advertising, Technology.

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