The Heidi Bowl was the first thing that came to mind.
You can’t IMAGINE who irritated my father was.
Gosh… the outrage went on for days.
Mind you, my dad was young at the time and TV was his passion.
We were the ones who ha d the first color one as an example.
Years later, my brother and I could get him to laugh talking about it.
But… it was YEARS later.
ETA: Just linked to Wiki. WTF?
“Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.”
Indeed they are. But I just assumed that any apology (whoever ended up making it) would be made to the Queen Mother, as it was her death that was prematurely announced.
As a football fan, I am somewhat ashamed to admit it, but–my sister and I, both children at the time, were anxiously awaiting the showing of Heidi and hoping that football would not delay or cancel it. We were glad when the football was shut down so the Heidi show came on; and we enjoyed the Heidi show, as I recall.
Then, of course, new rules came in, such that football got priority over everything. I didn’t really care, but my sister (who hated football to begin with) was constantly upset that football got priority over what was scheduled. Even if “her” show came on in full after football, it interfered with our parents’ mandated bedtime; and so, she would be angry at football, since it delayed what she wanted to see, and an immovable bedtime meant that she couldn’t see all of it.
I’ll admit that she did get her own back. If, say, a figure skating competition was on at the same time as, say, the Super Bowl, Mom made sure that my sister got to see figure skating on our TV, just so my sister would shut up and stop complaining. My Dad and I would have to go elsewhere to watch the Super Bowl game. (Usually a neighbour’s, as I recall.)
Not technically a technical screw up, in 1989. 98 Rock in Tampa played, without interruption or explanation, Stairway to Heaven for 24 hours straight.
When they finally finished they announced that they were becoming an all Led Zeppelin station. This lasted a couple of weeks. It was one of the oddest things I’ve ever experienced.
Anyway, imagine the blur after 20 or so hours of Stairway to Heaven.
Probably the station was undergoing a change of ownership and had shut down. They have to keep broadcasting to maintain their license, so stations in this situation often just put something on repeat and fire everyone.
Super Bowl of 2009, the Arizona Cardinals were playing and in the last few minutes of the game, a Cox cable supervisor broadcast a snippet of a porn movie. And they thought Janet Jackson’s nipple slip was bad!
About 10 years ago, a classic rock station I listened to in San Diego accidentally played AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” twice in a row. The DJ acknowledged the screwup on the air afterward. On a few occasions, i’ve heard stations accidentally start playing two songs at once, or start a song while the commercials are still playing.
I remember an episode of SNL from around the same time where one of the actors (Daryl Hammond, maybe?) accidentally called Tina Fey by her real name during a sketch instead of by her character’s name. Fey became angry, declared “Lorne was right, I shouldn’t be in sketches!”, and stormed off the stage. The sketch continued without her.
If it is this incident you are thinking of then it was worse than that. I’d totally forgotten about it and I saw it live (I had been in the UK for my birthday).
Basically, ITV had touted the last World Cup as the big one for HD. Loads of people bought HD sets for it. HD was everywhere. HD HD HD HD HD. Everyone was utterly hyped. England’s first game was against the US. Half the nation sat down to watch it, many with their new HD sets.
And then ITV HD (and only ITV HD) cut to commercial after three minutes, meaning everyone watching on ITV HD missed England’s first goal of the 2010 World Cup.
Let’s just say there was some shit slinging in the press.
This reminded me of this, which I heard in my university hall of residence with my roommate and I just staring at each other.
BBC Radio 1 accidentally played the uncensored version of “Killing in the name” by Rage Against the Machine in the top 40 run down, which occurs in the middle of a sunday afternoon.
Reminds me of the time WCW accidentally ran the wrong clips of Mean Gene talking about upcoming events on an episode of WCW Sat. Night that gave away the winner of the title unification match between WCW World Champion Rick Flair and WCW (international) World Champion Sting. They clips were clearly meant to run the week after the match, not before, but this is back when they taped about 3 months worth of shows in one weekend and someone dun goofed.
In Your House: Beware of Dog. They actually restored power in enough time to go through with the main event, so you had the opening bout, a promo for the next bout, lights out for about an hour, then the main event. For the make-good a few nights later they replayed the two aired matches, then redid the other two. Turned out to be a pretty good deal, since they both refunded the fee for the original airing, and then didn’t charge at all for the make-good. Though I hear a few cable systems were assholes and didn’t go along with the WWF in refunding/freebieing the shows.
I was watching Dennis Miller’s late night show 20-some years ago and they came back from commercial and Dennis was chatting with the crew members for a good 2 or three minutes. He turns to his producer and says “What the hell, Marty. Are we on fuckin’ vacation here?” Marty: “You’re on the air.”
A friend’s father once told me about a local PBS station who would frequently rerun a favorite old movie, some gangster-type thing where at one point the gangsters are discussing splitting up their ill-gotten gains, with someone getting “the lion’ share of it”. Apparently the tape had broken and been re-spliced at that part so many times the line actually became “The lion’s shit.”
