Sunday 13 June 2010

ITV misses goal

For those that haven't seen it here is ITV doing what they do best and goosing up their coverage of football:


I'd go on and wax lyrical about ITV and James Corden who cemented viewers misery after the match but a couple of our friends have already done it with aplomb HERE and THERE.

- Feel free to comment below -

6 comments:

Ali said...

that is shocking, why are they showing adverts during the game?

Danny Last said...

I won't trust ITV to give a full explanation Ali so have a look at this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10302816.stm

Halftime Whistle said...

Typical tripe from ITV. I just put myself through half an hour of James Corden's World Cup Live AGAIN. Why oh why did I not learn from the fifteen minutes I saw last night? My soul has just died.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for posting this ITV “boner”!!
…I had read about it and looked for clips...and all needed to do was check in with good ole EFW!

It would have been more considerate if ITV had missed the USA goal
…at least to the Green family…

Did u hear about the Brit announcers of the US broadcast of the Mex/SA match not understanding the Mexican offsides that nullified their goal off the corner?

They claimed it was an outrageously bad call and we American assumed Mexico had been robbed and riots were taking place south of the border…

Chaz

football gifts said...

unbelievable, they did the same when Everton scored against Liverpool in the FA Cup a couple of seasons ago.

Danny Last said...

@Halftime Whistle - Don't do it again old chap. That programme should carry a government health warning.

@Chaz - EFW Public service! What is the coverage like over there in general? ESPN are showing it right?

A report in the Guardian today re. ITV:


ITV yesterday apologised for a clanger almost as big as England goalkeeper Robert Green's after 1.5 million fans watching the World Cup clash with the USA on the broadcaster's HD channel missed Steven Gerrard's fourth minute goal because of a "transmission error".

The company apologised "unreservedly" for the "unacceptable interruption" to the game when human error led to high-definition viewers missing about 20 vital seconds of football.

They instead had to watch an ad for Hyundai cars, one of the station's two multimillion sponsors for its coverage of the tournament.

ITV immediately switched HD coverage to standard definition already being watched on ITV1 to avoid any other possible disruption to the broadcast.

The audience peaked near the game's end at 9.15pm, attracting 20.1 million viewers, 73% of the total TV audience, on its two channels.

As an investigation got under way, ITV blamed Technicolor, its transmission supplier.

When the blunder happened, an estimated 15 million viewers were watching the match in standard definition and were unaware that 1.5 million others were missing out. At half-time, presenter Adrian Chiles gave only the mildest hint of the calamity, when he said: "Apologies for those watching in HD, I believe there was some interruption in your coverage."

A statement from ITV said: "An error by ITV's transmission providers, Technicolor, meant that ITV1 HD's coverage of the England v USA match was interrupted for approximately 20 seconds. ITV1's standard definition coverage was unaffected.

ITV immediately investigated this issue and a preliminary report has indicated that the cause of the problem was human error at Technicolor, in London.

A spokesman said: "We are in dialogue with Hyundai and we have apologised."

ITV had about 1,000 complaints when a similar mistake – going to an advert – meant viewers missed Everton's winning goal at the end of extra time in a fourth round FA cup replay with Liverpool in February 2009, a glitch ITV called at the time "unprecedented".

There were also repeated complaints about the broadcaster's coverage of Formula 1 – now back with the BBC – because of ad breaks which viewers felt led to them missing important parts of the races.

In May this year, a "technical problem" led to some viewers missing the last six seconds of the first airing of Nike's three-minute World Cup ad.

The National Grid reported an electricity surge at half time of 1,140 megawatts, the equivalent of the power consumption of a city the size of Newcastle. At full-time, there was a 1,100MW surge, equivalent to 440,000 kettles being turned on.