Not For Broadcast Network Material Accidentally Broadcast (redux)

[country103]

2nd attempt on reviving this topic (the original topic: http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=38616.0) because i accidentally created another account on my i.p. address with a different username.

Trying this again, in mid-to-late October WPBN had local break troubles sometimes during Nightly News. The local break would get cut off, forcing the peacock on-air (Might i add that the peacock breakfiller got updated to fit their "More Colorful" branding, and the notable use of an audio test in the form of the NBC chimes, I kinda miss the old breakfiller.) Probably miscommunication between either WPBN or NBC, I don't know.

Last week during the big ten football championship game, FOX decided to use a UW-Madison ad to signal a local break. Needless to say, i thought WFQX-TV got owned by Badger fans in L.A. for a second, their local break rolled normally, but couldn't be upconverted to the HD feed in the first attempt, forcing the local break slate to pop-up. The HD feed joined the break in progress, that's how error-prone TV stations are in small markets.

During my last days in Minnesota, KMSP stupidly put WFTC's bug on their channel. I had to call their master control to point out the problem. (They also couldn't get the SD legal I.D. off one time during This Week In Baseball)

Finally, YouTube user "thomaslover135" uploaded a FOX NEWS level-2 cut-in reminder slate that managed to sneak on-air on WFXT, the O&O in Boston, while attempting to put on an infomercial. The cut-in was probally Herman Cain announcing his campaign suspension/"Plan B" at his Atlanta HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5lI6JbNQFA

(There was also the YouTube video of NBC running the wrong segment of "Loose Change" that got carried over from the old thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktmt9UrPPsE)

That is all for now.

 

[johnbasalla]

There are plenty of feeds and plenty of buttons that can be pushed, or not, that can cause trouble. Here's a local take from Cleveland, Ohio. WJW-TV8 runs the Antenna TV oldies network on their HD-8.2 channel. During the Browns/Steelers game on Thursday night 12-8-11, there was a few seconds of "All In The Family" that popped up. That, of course, was what was running properly on Antenna TV.

In the City of Cleveland, one of the local access Time/Warner cable channels runs educational programming for Cleveland's public schools. The programs are sent via fiber from the markets PBS affiliate to the community access cable facility on a community college campus. Then it is sent over the cable channel 22. Well, one day instead of the educational programming going on as scheduled, the channel had Our Gang (aka "The Little Rascals") films on. Inbetween the first and second episode there was 5 or so seconds of black and then the second one started. I thought if this was from some cable channel, there would be some logo or something inbetween. The feed was cut off by the local access people until the problem was resolved. To this day, no one can explain what happened or where the Rascals films were emanating from. It seemed that the films being shown were uncut versions.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

There are plenty of feeds and plenty of buttons that can be pushed, or not, that can cause trouble. Here's a local take from Cleveland, Ohio. WJW-TV8 runs the Antenna TV oldies network on their HD-8.2 channel. During the Browns/Steelers game on Thursday night 12-8-11, there was a few seconds of "All In The Family" that popped up. That, of course, was what was running properly on Antenna TV.

I didn't see that, but of course, there was a reason that such a messed up switch was possible tonight...due to the Browns/Steelers game, WJW moved the 10 PM edition of "Fox 8 News" over to 8.2/Antenna TV.

It's the first time they have ever done that, so I suspect someone hit the wrong switch right before..."All In The Family" runs right before 10 PM on 8.2. It was only a few seconds because they were right there monitoring it, one presumes, and when Archie and the gang took over from the NFL Network feed of the Browns game, I'm sure someone quickly hit the right switch.

 

[gbranch]

Sometimes, the accidental button pushes can really cause problems, like about 25 years ago when one of our local affililates accidentally broadcast several minutes of pornographic material. Apparently, the board op was watching an adult satellite channel on a remote monitor while he was watching the board. A wrong button press put the adult channel on air. Needless to say, the operater did not have a job after that.

A few years later, the same station was broadcasting a syndicated episode of the Simpsons that I guess was on videotape. Someone had inserted several minutes of pornographic material in the middle of the episode, and the station failed to preview the tape before airing. D'oh!

 

[MarcB]

A couple months ago when Antenna TV started their Sunday Night 90s block and debuted "News Radio". The first episode aired with no problems at 9PM Eastern, but the second episode at 9:30PM all chaos broke loose. They kept running the same 2 segments along with a Antenna TV Technical Difficulties slide. They abruptly cut-it off at 9:59PM and ran a promo "Married with Children" is next. Into Married With Children.

Just last week after Maude ended on Antenna TV (WTIC-TV 61.2), Channel 61.2 aired a FOX Connecticut News Update instead of the opening sequence to "Sanford and Son." Normally they show the FOX Connecticut News update on Antenna TV during the commercial break at around :15 and :45 after the hour. I mentioned it to Antenna TV on Facebook and they said WTIC-TV didn't know how the screw-up happened.

A couple weeks ago I was watching Anderson Cooper on WCTX Channel 59 (MY TV 9) out of New Haven, CT at 9AM. The show eneded and went into Commercial break just before 10AM. I left the room during the commercial break and at 10AM instead of hearing the opening theme to The Wendy Williams Show I hear the audio of another show. In the time it took me to get from my bedroom back to the living room to see what was airing I got there just in time to see the screen flip and switch to Wendy Williams already in progress. The Master Control for Channel 59 is in Chicopee, Massachusetts along with the MC for sister stations WTNH/8 New Haven, WWLP/22 Springfield Mass, WPRI/12 and WNAC/64 Providence, MY TV Rhode Island (WNAC 64.2), and Channel 10 from Virginia.

Several years back - I wanna say maybe 10 or 15 years, FOX 61 used to air a movie in the early morning hours I think 2AM-4AM and through the entire 2 hour movie where the commercials should've been was a full-screen FOX 61 Slide.


Another time I forgot what year, they didn't have a New York Yankees Affiliate in Hartford and the Redsox were contracted with UPN 20/NBC 30 (NBC 30 LMA'd UPN 20 at the time), well UPN 20/NBC 30 finally decided to pick up the Yankees Games. They farmed out some conflicting Yankees Games to WTWS Channel 26, which ran Paxon's In-TV (Infomercial TV). Being that WTWS was an all-infomercial station they had no commercials so during commercials breaks a slide went on the screen that said something to the effect of "New York Yankees Baseball on WTWS."

Several years after that it was The Redsox turn to have no affiliate in Hartford. Well in-steps WHCT Channel 18 to pick up the games. WHCT had just returned to the air after being silent for 5 or 6 years and was being run by a bankruptcy court lawyer and ran the Shop-At-Home Network Well a lot of the games were aired with very low audio, dead air during commercial breaks, and WHCT CHANNEL 18 HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT plastered at the bottom of the screen in YELLOW letters. On top of that Channel 18 had yet to return to most of the cable companies in Connecticut, so you know that The Redsox games being on Channel 18 went over like a lead balloon.

 

[MarcB]

Sometimes, the accidental button pushes can really cause problems

And how. When I was learning how to DJ at the club I saw an un-labeled switch on the console. Before my mentor could stop me I said "What does this button do?" and flipped the switch, killing power to the CD player. :-[ I quickly flipped the switch back on and the music resumed. I was lucky I didn't get beer bottles thrown at me. My mentor just growled at me and told me not to touch anything and just observe him.

 

[Wright County Guy]

A couple months ago when Antenna TV started their Sunday Night 90s block and debuted "News Radio". The first episode aired with no problems at 9PM Eastern, but the second episode at 9:30PM all chaos broke loose. They kept running the same 2 segments

Something similar happened with "30 Rock" during the 7:30pm/et showing on Comedy Central during the last week of November. After the first two segments, they came back with the 3rd and 4th segments from the show shown at 7pm/et.

 

[davect]

Several years ago WCVB Boston accidentally aired an ABC Special Report. It was in fact a tape of a Special Report weeks earlier. My understanding is ABC news was playing it on the news feed channel but the master control op saw the special report slate and thought it was for broadcast.

 

[Tim-In-Houston]

Just last week after Maude ended on Antenna TV (WTIC-TV 61.2), Channel 61.2 aired a FOX Connecticut News Update instead of the opening sequence to "Sanford and Son." Normally they show the FOX Connecticut News update on Antenna TV during the commercial break at around :15 and :45 after the hour. I mentioned it to Antenna TV on Facebook and they said WTIC-TV didn't know how the screw-up happened.

1: Why would the network know or necessarily care what happened at the local level? Unless there's a technical glitch sending/receiving the signal to the station they're out of the loop completely at the local level.

2: Most likely scenario: someone in WTIC traffic, responsible for coding the commercials, promos, etc entered the wrong code or coded the timing wrong before it went to the server.

When I was in Great Falls, doing on-air work, our centralized master control ops were responsible for recording, coding and sequencing my weather inserts in the morning. And I can't count the number of times a previous days (or previous week's!!!) weather insert aired in place of the one I had recorded that morning.

Here in Houston, I quickly learned the Fox-owned stations centralized all MC through a company outside Las Vegas. Some of the local inserts hit a second or two later than they should (especially when they air in place of a network promo filler) and I've seen a days old topical news promo air when it shouldn't.

One morning, about two weeks, the MC computer freaked out and kept overriding the signal from our studio control. As soon as the break was over, our "beauty shot/rejoin" popped up for about five seconds and then immediately cut to the next scheduled break. I think that went on for about 15 minutes before they got a hold of Las Vegas to fix the problem.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Eons ago, probably in the 1980s (maybe it was 1983 for the 20th anniversary)...

During afternoon closed-circuit feed time, one day CBS was previewing, for affiliates,
a special about the JFK assasination. Included was the clip from ATWT where, at
1:40 PM ET, Cronkite interrupts with the first bulletin.

The master control operator at a certain CBS affiliate saw the (by then dated) "CBS
Bulletin" slide, and took the network. Viewers in that market of course heard
"...in Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade..."
before the closed-circuit network feed could be taken down.

 

[crainbebo]

Was that 1988? I have a blank VHS tape with the "Four Days in November" CBS special aired that year with Dan Rather.

-crainbebo

 

[Sammi Brie]

I've seen Fox Sports slides (on an O&O! ) and the NBC local spot breakfiller before.