One of the biggest TV screw-ups ever?

[Avid Listener]

I'm a recently turned geezer (four years into nonpersonhood to Madison Avenue) and I can tell you my brand loyalty is nil. I buy only store brand generics for just about all my food purchases now -- at places like Aldi and Ocean State Job Lot, not Stop & Shop and Wal-Mart. I see lots of folks my age or thereabouts doing the same thing. Advertisers must despise me.

I'm much the same when it comes to most everyday consumer goods. I do most of our grocery shopping, since I am also an avid gourmet cook. So, advertisers who want me to switch brands of common commodities aren't going to have any more luck getting my attention now than they would have when I was in my 20s. Back then, advertising to me about brand name commodity products was already a waste of time. But, I do pay attention to ads for new stores, new restaurants, car dealerships, and other such things. I'll often go to a store I don't usually go to if I learn of a special deal going on for an item I wanted to get.

I have tried new products on the market because I first learned that they existed through hearing or seeing advertising. I tried both Blue Moon and Sam Adams beers because I had seen them advertised. Neither was good enough to move me from Yuengling Black-and-Tan as my favorite beer, but I do sometimes drink a Blue Moon or a Sam Adams on occasion. I shopped at Guitar Center recently because I heard their ad about a sale, and picked up some guitar gear. My wife is considering buying a new car from a dealer she first visited because she heard one of their ads on the radio. It's for a Hyundai, so no one can claim at least one customer in her 60's will consider a new brand.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I do most of our grocery shopping, since I am also an avid gourmet cook.

Does that mean you'll change your screen name to "Avid Gourmet Cook" too?

 

[Avid Listener]

Does that mean you'll change your screen name to "Avid Gourmet Cook" too?

No, but that's a possible name I could use in gourmet food forums.

 

[danderson4411]

what about one time when NBC switched out of a Browns Raiders game to Colt Chargers because they thought Colts Chargers was more competitive only to have the raiders come back late?

 

[valvashon]

Given the fact that entire books could be filled with all of the screw-ups that have happened on TV since the first broadcasts, a minor embarrassment about the scheduling of a TV commercial on some obscure little station in the backwaters of New England would barely make the top 500. A more accurate title would be "One of the most petty, though marginally amusing, TV screw-ups on a minor local station back in 1988".

I'll add to the backwater screw-ups. I was working at KVNJ-TV in Fargo, ND back in 1985-1986 as a Master Control operator. At the time it was a UHF operation on channel 15, the first UHF station in Fargo and probably the whole of North Dakota and probably northern Minnesota as well. They first went on the air in 1983, put up by people with only a passing knowledge of TV and even less money. They got a deal on a used transmitter (and still got ripped off) from down south, when it got there they found that much of it was not useable as it was a very high power transmitter with a very complicated and extensive cooling system to handle the hot weather down there. None of this was needed in ND and it certainly wasn't licensed to use the full megawatt-style power that this unit put out. This is because they had about a 150' tower in the parking lot with a very lossy line running up to the top. The transmitting antenna was a bunch (like 6) of UHF two-way corner reflectors arranged in a circle around the top of the tower. You'll call BS on this but I know what it looked like and I'm sorry I never took a picture of what was up there. They were able to coax some life out of the mid-50's exciter part of the transmitter and I was told that they were putting out 1000 watts and losing 600 watts in the transmission line! With 400 watts hitting those corner reflectors I barely got a snowy picture at mom's house less than 8 miles away, and this was with the 6 foot long yagi antenna I convinced dad to let me put on the roof.

Needless to say the viewers were few and far between, what with the barely-there signal and low budget cast off programming and overall poor technical quality. Shortly before I got there they were signing on at about 4pm and off by 11pm. I was hired after they were bought out by the Regis chain of hair salons (really) and went back to being on the air all day. I aired the cartoons nobody else wanted in the mornings (including He-Man from VHS tapes!) and then went off to college in Moorehead. Some sort of low-budget music video thing filled the rest of the afternoon. When the Regis purchase happened they had the money to put up some real transmission line and a new solid state transmitter, so the signal was improved and we started having some actual coverage- we were getting reception reports from 20 miles away!

The screw up in question happened on Christmas Day or maybe it was Christmas eve as I was supposed to air a (Midnight?) Mass live from the Vatican, and then join It's A Wonderful Live in progress from SPN, the Satellite Programming Network if anybody remembers that. Our traffic department was notorious for their mistakes, and they put the incorrect satellite and transponder information on the log. SPN had moved, and I had to go looking for them! We had two satellite dishes, and I had the Mass tuned in on the fast one. When it became clear that SPN was not where the log said it was (there was snow on that particular transponder) I moved the molasses slow one to the Mass, did a hot switch and went looking. All programming (for us) in those days was on C-Band and analog, either in the clear or scrambled. Satellite by satellite, 24 transponders each, I moved across the sky looking for It's A Wonderful Life. I had never watched the movie, but was taking film study classes in college and had read textbook passages on it, so I had an idea on what to look for. After the Mass ended I had to put up some filler stuff or a trouble slide, I can't remember exactly.

Finally! Jimmy Stewart in black and white! I hot punched that receiver and it was on, joined in progress. I'd only seen Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock films (in class) but this was turning out to be a pretty good movie! And then the "Nick-At-Nite" bump and commercial break aired. This was back in the days when It's A Wonderful Life was in public domain, so anybody with a copy was airing it. OMG- I was airing Nick-At-Nite! Their break ended and the movie started again. I had to go back to searching- I did the dish move, the hot punch and then the hunt was back on. I finally found the SPN feed, at a completely different place in the movie and somewhat ahead. Another hot punch and then I turned to the typewriter to write an epic discrepancy report.

I lasted another 6 months or so at KVNJ, through their move to the new building and call letter change to KVRR. I was finally let go because I was actually writing discrepancy reports when something went wrong, when we were supposed to just ignore problems so the new investors would think that everything was going great. I can't help but think that the Nick-At-Nite incident had something to do with it as well.

I have stories about trying to air movies from film on the 16mm Bell and Howell projectors which seemed to be discarded grade school projectors, but I'll save those for another time.

Val

 

[mvcg66b3r]

More TV screw-ups (the Heidi Bowl is No. 10 on this list):
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...hinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory

One more screw-up not on the TV Tropes list: the Olympics Triplecast. NBC thought viewers could pay up to $170 to see the 1992 Games live (they were tape-delayed on the broadcast network). In the end, NBC and partner Cablevision lost $100 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympics_Triplecast

Here's one blogger's take, comparing the Triplecast to New Coke and the Ford Edsel.
http://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2013/07/30/the-agony-of-defeat/

 

[mvcg66b3r]

Also from TVTropes: Shows that were "so bad, they're horrible."
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/LiveActionTV

Two late entries from the above link:

Utopia, an ambitious $50 million program that Fox premiered in fall 2014, and which quickly went down as one of the biggest bombs in TV history. Based on a Dutch reality show, fifteen people from all walks of life were sent to live on a compound in southern California in the hopes of building a new society, with a working farm, a lake stocked with fish, and a 24/7 live camera feed that anybody could watch online. While the original Dutch show it was based on was a success, the American version completely botched the execution, as the cast was composed of jerkasses and exaggerated stereotypes picked out specifically to cause tension with each other (a minster and an atheist, a hunter and an animal rights activist, etc.), pretty much defeating the whole point of the show right from the start. One critic called it nothing but non-stop "farming, fighting, and fornicating — but mostly fighting," few of the people involved (in either the cast or the production) seemed to have any idea what they were doing or what the point of the show was, and some cast members were overtly saying on camera that they couldn't wait to get voted off so they could collect their paychecks. The show's swift cancellation after only one month strained the Fox network and deepened its slump in the mid '10s, and sparked much discussion about whether Reality TV, at least on the broadcast networks, was wearing out its welcome.

Knock Knock Live! was a reality show that pretty much mixed everything about the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, celebrities, and everything bad about a reality show in one mix, plus Ryan Seacrest. In this show Seacrest went door-to-door with various celebrities to give regular people anything from cash to big prizes to the chance to play and win a big game. Despite a very big name for Fox attached to it in the form of Ryan Seacrest, this was not enough to stop the show from bombing and being canned after only two episodes.

 

[landtuna]

My wife is considering buying a new car from a dealer she first visited because she heard one of their ads on the radio. It's for a Hyundai, so no one can claim at least one customer in her 60's will consider a new brand.

She won't be disappointed in that brand. Both Kia (owned by Hyundai) and parent Hyundai are building the class act of lower-to-luxury cars today. I have owned two of them and, if I live long enough, will buy another.

 

[landtuna]

Failing shows from Fox isn't really news. They are the bottom feeders of national broadcasters and have been for years.