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

Somewhere between Channel 3 North East/Yorkshire and ITN, the timings get a bit astray. Resulting in a cut across just a little too early and giving us a nice look at ITN's VT Clock.


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

A slight hiccup with the end of the news on the 22nd Of June 2001 where the correct music fails to play.


TTTV (Picture Fault) - 2001

Local weather conditions (from memory of one of the announcements not on here) cause some transmission problems on a June afternoon in 2001. Maggie provides viewers with continuity apologising for the problems beyond their control.


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

BBC1 got going again slightly before BBC Two - so here is the very ending of the second channel's return. With the announcer apologising, and trying to buy some more time.


Home and Away Aspect Ratio Mistake - 2/8/2001

Channel 5 have some fun deciding what aspect ratio to send out this episode of Home and Away in...


Yorkshire 2001 - Mistake

All that flashy technology for handling continuity at the Leeds centre, and they still can't get things right. In this mistake, the recorded announcement starts repeating itself in a loop. That would never have happened with live continuity!


Yorkshire 2001 - Mistake 2

A different junction and announcer, but it's the same looping speech problem. Perhaps this was a cynical new attempt by Yorkshire to try and make themselves sound more regional, as in both mistakes it loops on the words 'From the Region'.


BBC1 Comedy Mistake - 2002

And heres another one of those 'new look, old mistakes'. This time its on BBC1, where the announcer is very kind and informs us that the Vicar of Dibley is now on! Or is it?


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

A mistake from Yorkshire's flagship news programme Calendar. Instead of cutting to the news opening titles, someone accidentally switches on the feed for the subregion, where Nicola Crompton is busy revising her script. Listen to her voice change as she suddenly realises she's on air.


CBBC Channel Advert - 2002

Ah the wonders of live TV! From August 2002, we get to chuckle with the CBBC channel presenters as they swiftly need to improvise when a programme promo fails to play.


CBBC Sheeep Mistake - 2002

And another mistake from CBBC. This time, someone presses the button to shrink the programme 'Sheeep' down to the 'credit' box, during the programme, letting us see the presenters secretly reading the script, as well as giving everyone a preview of the competition question.


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

This breakdown occured during the Weekend News and Sport on the 19th April 2003. Quite unusual for the modern-day ITV, they not only managed an apology, but dug out some music to play while they corrected the fault.


UK Gold Breakdown - 2003

Shame UK TV doesn't put as much care into their apologies. After this breakdown on the 25th May 2003, we're treated not to some funky music, but to the sound of running water instead. We're well on the road to getting the sound of paint drying now!


ITV NC Markets - 2003

The ITV News Channel presents its market report under the new 2003 look. Listen as Nicholas Owen valiantly carries on whilst the graphics fail around him!


Sky Sports Breakdown - 2003

A breakdown during the cricket on Sky Sports on the 10/6/2003.


Calendar (Report Cut Short) - 2004

A simple but common mistake from Yorkshire's Calendar News, where a report VT is suddenly cut short. After a brief cut to a static of the generic news titles, they drop back to the main studio to apologise for the loss of the report.


S4C Election - Graphic Error - 2010

In a long running live show with lots happening, it's inevitable there'll be a few hiccups. Here the ticker goes a bit askew during the S4C election coverage.


BBC Four (Breakdown) - 2017

A breakdown during The Proms on BBC Four in July 2017, resulting in several minutes of animated slide with... well nothing else really.


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

Northern Ireland pres not quite expecting an ECP from the network feed on New Years Day 2018 as they turn on their own ECP, resulting in ECPception.


E4 (ECP Mistake) - 2018

Playout of the End Credit Promotion on E4 starts a little earlier than planned, cutting in over the end of Extreme Cake Makers and leaving the accompanying audio announcement out of time with the visuals.


BBC One (Continuity Mistake) - 2018

The wrong pre-recorded continuity is played into News At Ten on November 30th, with an announcement for the previous programme Mrs Brown's Boys starting late then continuing over the introduction to the news.


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

A mistake with timings when loading in a trailer on BBC One Scotland allows us to see a BBC Creative VT clock (or the closest you get to one now). Due to the timing now being out by a few seconds, the end of the trailer is also then cut short by the festive ident into the news.


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 Northern Ireland introduce the 6 O'Clock News on February 10th 2020... before promptly joining the BBC Two feed instead by mistake for a brief period.


BBC One (Politics Mistake) - Christmas 2020

From 6th December 2020, a small audio looping issue is heard with the announcement into Politics Midlands being carried on network BBC One HD.


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

BBC World News joined the simulcast coverage for Prince Philip's funeral on April 17th 2021, like many of the other BBC channels. While the others joined in cleanly, BBC World had some bumpy audio issues briefly where speaking could be heard.


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!


BBC News (Countdown Freeze) - 2022

Between the end of the weather and the start of the 10 O'Clock news bulletin on the BBC News Channel on November 9th 2022, the regular countdown playout was seen to freeze for the length of the junction before abruptly cutting to the news studio output on the hour.


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