TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

At the time there was a poster on Digital Spy who - based on what they said, backed up by what they posed - worked for ITV Sport. They said ITV were supplying Al Jazeera with pictures and commentary, and they kept coverage because ITV had the reserve (and an ISDN with clean commentary) that didn’t go through the IBC.

Commseng- do you have any idea why it was the Swiss and not ZDF who had the reserve uplink on site that night? Might they have fed the reserve to the EBU or would that have been independent?

What is puzzling is that if such an EBU reserve existed why more European broadcasters didn’t have it available to switch to when the feeds via the IBC went down?


It was an electrical storm that knocked out power to the IBC in Vienna. Germany v Turkey was being played in Basel. (The tournament being co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland).

How exactly does that site work? I get the emails but apparently my account doesn't exist

Do you mean the mailing list emails or emails about the PP?

I get the mailing list email, followed a few minutes later by the PP one (if something new has been added)

You should be able to follow the help instructions on the PP home page in that case. PM me if not and I'll try to help there rather than taking this off topic

Near disaster for the title deciding Japanese Grand Prix in 1996, fans getting up in the early hours/staying up all night to see if Damon Hill can bring home the title...

When suddenly the pictures are lost during the 2nd parade lap! (24 minutes in)

By Murray Walker's comments the feed at the circuit was probably lost too. Luckily they get them back just in time!

It’s really rare for a network or OB to break down in the US. I wonder what the difference is? During sports there’s generally two back up links (sometimes different satellites, one fiber and ESPN has used TVU units with dedicated internet and cell service), the networks have two regionally diverse (usually both coasts) playout centers with most having Ku and C-band signals being uplinked and received at the station.

Sometimes local news falls off air usually because of a automated production fault. One local station has issues with their wireless mics for a few minutes after a lightning strike hits their shared tower (maybe the issue is that their building is closest and connected directly to the tower with the transmitter inside the building for them and their radio station where as another station near the tower is further away and the transmitter is in a separate building solely because of distance) but they go to commercial and continue on from the newsroom which has multiple wired mics.

Guessing the affiliate(s) cut back to the NBC network too early/late?

A lot of the clips and incidents in this thread are over 20 years ago. Breakdowns are rare here now, mainly because there are no tape heads to get clogged on VT machines, no telecine changeovers between reels of film. Everything is played off server and there is usually a backup copy running in sync. Generally once something pre recorded gets on air, it stays on.

The most common breakdowns now are live programmes falling off air, due to a Comms issue of one kind or another, digital desks crashing, power failure, evacuation etc or automation issues in pres.

And live programmes that do fall off air usually do so because of a lack of back ups and that's down to money. The production and broadcaster have to weigh up how important the programme is versus how much they want to spend on resilience.

For example does a daytime programme which gets under a million viewers need two sat trucks uplinking onto two different satellites received at two different downlink sites?


The operations of both the BBC and ITV are now split into two geographically diverse sites (which doesn't mean they're all in two locations) so things are much more resilient now than they were. It is possible to have an OB down linked in two different locations and the two paths not touch the same infrastructure all the way to playout which itself can be in two locations.

In my experience a lot of this is redundant because some TX controllers/directors jump for the breakdown slide rather than the backup that's been set up at great expense for them.

In fact I remember a breakdown where a tape went tits up about 10 minutes before the 9 o clock news, which always went out at exactly 9pm. There was a guard copy running in sync and available but instead it was slide, apology, recue the tape to the point it went wrong and hit the news 3 minutes late.

They were the local broadcaster, and may have had feeds from the stadium as a matter of normal operations for them. I suspect it was independent of the EBU. Why ZDF or the Turkish broadcaster didn't back it up themselves is a fair question.
I wasn't involved in this one, but may be able to find out.

Agreed, I have found that too.
Also I have known them to use the reserve without telling the OB, rather than the main path.
That in itself almost caused a failure at a major event, but was spotted just in time.......