ITV has not helped the High Definition cause by missing England’s opening goal in the World Cup match against USA. I have been promoting HD as the future of television and video, and as I was watching the match on the ITV1 HD channel, suddenly a commercial appeared! The mistake was only 20 seconds long (seemed like a lifetime) in which Gerrard scored! I could not believe it! I shouted and swore at the TV and then switched channels to watch the rest of the match in Standard Definition. The timing of this mistake was unbelievable.
So how could this have happened? The broadcaster explained that the problem was the result of “human error” by staff at ITV’s transmission provider and they have insisted that “appropriate action” will be taken to ensure it doesn’t suffer a repeat of the problem.
I suspect the “human error” was caused by a technician previewing the commercial that was supposed to be aired at the half-time break. Unfortunately he or she had the wrong button switched on the vision mixer, which allowed the commercial to be seen when it should not have been. We all make mistakes but I could not believe this happened when England scored! And this is not first time ITV have made the same mistake. The winning goal was missed during an FA cup match between Liverpool and Everton. Again an unscheduled advertisement was aired towards the end of extra time.?Viewers returned to find that Everton had scored the winning goal.
ITV has apologised profusely about the mistakes, but will they happen again? Probably… you can never account for human error. Maybe England needs these kinds of mistakes to score more goals and win the world cup?!
