BBC - interrupting an interruption - why?

Yesterday evening my partner and I were watching the Euro-2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey. A very thrilling match!

During the second half the picture froze, a thunder and lighting storm had knocked out the broadcast relay centre in Vienna. Within a few seconds a test-screen appeared on our TV with the text: "we've lost the connection with Vienna and we're trying to rectify the fault asap".

And at the same time BBC had switched the sound to the live Radio Five broadcast - well done BBC. You have to admire those radio-commentators, thanks to their detailed and at times very lively description of what was going on on the field we still 'saw' the game with our minds eye.

Until......
the live radio broadcast was interrupted by a TV-announcer: we've lost the connection with Vienna, but we're trying to get things back in order as soon as possible. We're sorry for the interruption of the broadcast - or something like that.

Why state the obvious?!? Now we almost missed a goal being scored! We knew we'd lost the picture - it said so on the screen! - but the radio commentators were doing a great job of keeping us up to date, they even knew they were 'on TV' too.

This happened not once, but twice! Apparently the first repair didn't hold longer than 10 minutes, but again when the broadcast was interrupted the second time, radio Five took over within seconds.

This very unnecessary and irritating interruption of an interruption reminded me of Peter F. Drucker's quote:

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all".

Comments

[Peter]

Hi Karin,

That really impresses me that the BBC have developed a way of automatically Switches my television off when something really useless is on ie a game of football between two countries that are not in the UK!

What is really amazing is the fact that they ran it on BBC 1 and BBC2 at the same time as well as Radio 5, what I want to know was is better on the radio, and was it in colour?

Peter Allen.

[Karin H.]

Hi Pete!

LOL, yes, the radio comment was in colour - like in your dreams ;-)

Now, question for your: if it had been rugby or cricket I wonder if you would have appreciated it more, even though the UK is always loosing those games? ;-)

Karin H

[Todd Jordan]

Fascinating post. This made me feel like I was sitting right beside you experiencing this. In the US when a station has problems, you don't get radio. LOL.

Great share.

[Karin H.]

Hi Todd

Well, I was really amazed by how the radio presentators made it 'live'.
And then the BBC TV tried to solve a problem which wasn't there ;-)

Karin H