Quote:
Originally Posted by Snaqwells
That snafu has gone down as the biggest production blunder in TV history.
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In 1961, Wisconsin station WISN-TV, a then-CBS affiliate, opted not to carry that year's annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz, running a Green Bay Packers football game instead. In contrast to the Heidi telecast, the popularity of The Wizard of Oz as an annual TV event at that time was such that the station was forced to run the movie locally at a later date.
On June 25, 1963, in the second to last over of the 2nd Test match between the England and West Indies cricket teams at Lord's, the BBC left the match for the scheduled news at 5:50 p.m., even though England only needed eight runs to win and the West Indies two wickets and a draw or tie was also possible. However, Kenneth Adam, Director of Television and a cricket fan was watching and managed to order the news off the air and a return to the cricket. So the first news story, which was about President John F. Kennedy, was faded out and the last part of the match was shown, which ended in a draw with England at 228-9, six runs short of winning.
On December 22, 1968, CBS interrupted coverage of a Western Conference championship game between the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Colts in order to show a broadcast of the Apollo 8 mission. The interruption began approximately three minutes before halftime of the game, and lasted 17 minutes. CBS showed highlights of the missed action (which involved no scoring) when the network returned to football; nonetheless, the network received approximately 3,000 complaints after the game.
On September 26, 1981, the scheduled Major League Baseball Game of the Week between the Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers had ended, and the NBC affiliate in Buffalo, NY, WGRZ, picked up the network's backup game, a Houston Astros-Los Angeles Dodgers contest in which Nolan Ryan was pitching his lone National League no-hitter. However, the coverage suddenly ended just as the ninth inning started, when the local station cut away to regular programming. WGRZ felt duty-bound to present a naval training film--Life Aboard an Aircraft Carrier.
In 1982 the team handball world championships were played in West Germany. The final stood between USSR and Yugoslavia and went into double overtime. In Denmark, the game was broadcast on Danmarks Radio (DR), then the only television station in Denmark. During overtime, the game was cut off for a scheduled newscast. The anchor promised that the final minute of the game would be shown following the newscast. A couple of minutes into the news, the phone on the newsreader's desk rang (they did not use earpieces then). He answered it: "Yes... right now? ...yes", then hung up and told viewers that they would rejoin the game. As it turned out, the chief executive of DR television had been watching the game at home and was so displeased with the cutoff that he called the studio and gave a direct order to resume the broadcast of the game.
Up until the mid 1980s, Hockey Night in Canada also used to switch from the end of late running games to show the start of The National. Dave Hodge once threw a pencil in the air after he had to announce CBC's decision to not show the end of an overtime game, and was subsequently fired.
On May 16, 2001, another NHL hockey game on the CBC was abruptly cut off on CBUT Vancouver at 7:58 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time during the second overtime of a playoff game involving two American teams, as the provincial polls were about to close, even though the election was a predicted landslide. The CBC had the ability to warn its viewers in BC that they would switch to election coverage at around 8 pm (through text scrolls, overtime intermission news breaks), yet failed to do so and thereby surprised viewers with the sudden cutoff.
In 2001, NBC affiliate, WSLS-TV, in Roanoke, Virginia cut away from live coverage of the GNC Live Well 300 Busch Series event from Homestead-Miami Speedway with 7 laps to go to show an infomercial for Ab Roller Plus.
In 2000, the NASCAR Busch Series Albertson's 300 from Texas Motor Speedway was delayed by rain for over 4 hours. CBS switched to a Final Four pregame show at 4 p.m. EST, stating that the race would resume live on TNN, which was then a sister cable network, whenever it started (the race was cut to TNN at 4 pm ET the previous year because of the NCAA Final Four Pre-Game Show). However, at 6 pm ET, a crawl on the bottom of the screen on TNN said that due to continuing delays, the race would not be broadcast (even though the race actually restarted at about the time the crawl came on the screen). The program on at the time of the crawl was a children's cartoon movie called An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. Some attribute this incident to new Viacom management which had taken over CBS Cable operations in advance of Viacom's takeover of CBS (which was official a month later), and ignored the CBS Charlotte division that ran the network's motorsports operations, which was shut down by MTV that November. In 2001, MTV Networks, the division of Viacom that ran TNN, was sued by two auto racing sanctioning bodies (American Speed Association and World of Outlaws) for breach of contracts CBS had signed; CBS had owned 25% of the American Speed Association, which they purchased after losing NASCAR rights at the end of the 2000 season, and extended their World of Outlaws contract after also losing NHRA rights. This led to the demise of the original American Speed Association, and a short-lived split in winged dirt sprint car racing. Viacom still owns the re-named Spike TV, but the CBS network's parent company was spun off into CBS Corporation in 2005.
In 2004, ABC cut away from the final round of the Buick Open PGA Tour golf tournament at 7 p.m. ET to show a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos. Three players were involved in a sudden-death shootout when ABC signed off. Again, this was only in the Eastern and Central time zones; West Coast viewers stuck with ABC until the end.
In 2004, during the coverage of a cricket test match in Australia where Shane Warne was on the verge of becoming the sport's highest ever wicket-taker, instead of staying with the cricket, the Nine Network instead cut to a game show, The Price is Right.
On April 24, 2005, as the San Marino Grand Prix reached its climax, and Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher were fighting for the win, ITV went to a 2' 30" advert break and missed the final 3 laps.
On April 30, 2006, viewers of ABC7 Monterey (a special cable version of ABC-owned KGO-TV in San Francisco for the Monterey market, which does not have an ABC affiliate), did not see the end of a National Basketball Association playoff game between the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers. The feed was cut off with one minute remaining in the overtime period in favor of an infomercial advertising a DVD, The Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show. Viewers missed Kobe Bryant's game-winning shot at the buzzer. The shot gave the Lakers a 3-games-to-1 lead in the series; however, the Lakers lost the series by dropping the final three games.