Oops. Technical problems hit Seven News.
Video: Black bars and audio noise crackling across the screen, send Seven News into a ratings dive.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Seven News Melbourne got off to a bad start last night when technical problems appeared to derail it on air.
As the theme music and headlines rolled, there were black bars and audio noise crackling across the screen.
The problems persisted for about 90 seconds until Seven threw to a commercial break for 2:45 mins before starting all over again with Jennifer Keyte.
The error hit Seven hard, with just 141,000 tuning in to its first half hour, while Nine News enjoyed a whopping 517,000 for the same duration (on the previous Thursday Seven was 285,000).
Last night Seven News nationally failed to crack the million mark, suggesting that first 90 seconds is do or die time.
Seven has issued a statement to TV Tonight:
At 6 o’clock yesterday evening, as Seven Melbourne crossed to the control room dedicated to the 6pm News Bulletin, a faulty cable connector linking the control room and presentation, failed.
Jen Keyte was in the chair (Mitch is on leave).
Video and audio crackling made the picture and sound of such poor quality, the control room decided to throw to a commercial break, so the problem could be rectified.
After the commercial break, at 6:03pm the bulletin recommenced, this time with perfect vision and sound.
Jen explained and apologised and pushed on with a perfect outcome.
General Manager Broadcast Operations, Andrew Anderson said:
“We take it for granted with live broadcasts, that every time we push a button we will get the response we expect.
“Every so often we get technical reminders, like we had last night, to be ready for a whole range of unplanned outcomes.
“At the end of the day though, it’s the News anchor who has the toughest ride, and Jen Keyte’s calm professionalism, under considerable pressure was faultless.”
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18 Responses
Ch7 said it was a faulty cable connector linking the control room and presentation??? I don’t think so!!
so ch7, are u saying that you don’t do checks of your links etc???
nice try ch7!
I guess after the restart there were no ads until 6:30.
May I suggest that unless things have changed a great deal since.
There may be some more explanations in the TvTonight’s news items archives, and refresh all the excuses given by all networks as to why they cannot update their EPG’s in conjunction with programme over runs etc, seemingly because of outsourcing to separate control centres?
If it was “live” how come she didn’t apologise straight up at the start of the 2nd run?
Why didn’t Presentation notice video breakup coming from the control room before it went to air?
Nine News Sydney had a few problems the previous night. First Peter Overton had a coughing fit while reading a story then the autocue broke down and stayed offline until the end of the bulletin meaning everything had to be read off paper scripts. Ken Sutcliffe is from the pre-autocue generation and handled it fairly well, but Peter Overton had a few problems and stumbled a few times with the old school method of newsreading.
On the second attempt, why then is no apology given for the technical problems, it was left until after the first package ran.
Boy there a heap of people out there who like to sink the slipper when anything goes wrong.
I agree with DansDans the the shots are the same because its the way they shoot it, Close inspection of the 2 different openings whilst looking similar are slightly different. In the first Jen does a slight shuffle of her scripts before she speaks and in the repeated version the is a much more pronounced shifting of the scripts. I also would put a $5 bet on that she would do a slight shuffle of her notes again tonight out of habit.
$0.02
Some really uneducated comments here
1) “Kid fresh out of university in the control room” – what junk? Where is the proof they have nothing but professional staff in the control room? Unless you know first hand, I’d suggest not making comments like that
2) “Framing, shots and movement were exactly the same” – someone doesnt know anything about Television. Try working in a studio and you will witness them doing the same thing over and over again. Of course shots were the same – they practice the look and feel of everything and time it to the second – this stuff isnt done on the fly.
Far out, some of these comments…
If anything, last nights glitch proved that Seven News is not live, but prerecorded at least until the first story rolls. It was strange that the framing, shots and movement from Jen were exactly the same with no hint of ‘something just went wrong’.
What’s your proof GMPetrie??
I can tell you it was all live when the broadcast recommenced
While technical problems can happen unexpectedly, it seems in this case the fault between studio and transmission was already existing. In the “old days” the control room would establish with transmission just before they went to air that they were receiving a good signal.
It used to be there were enough staff in the control room to check these sort of things to save on air embarrassment. Sadly nowadays it’s usually just some kid fresh out of university (cheap labour) in the control room whose in charge of operating a computer programme that has done away with the control room staff that would have done all the technical checks before and during going to air.
As in most things in life, you get what you pay for.
Technical glitches and human mistakes do happen but how come it took them over 1½ minutes to decide to switch to a commercial break? It’s not like they had to spool up another tape – it’s all digital. Isn’t there someone on deck checking what’s being transmitted, ready to take control if required or are they paying the janitor to keep an eye on it in this age of remote-controlled cameras?
Question to 7’s GMBO Andrew Anderson, could there be two faulty cables, because it seems the cable that connects city to country is not only faulty and intermittently transmits digital rubbish, but also must be located where anybody can trip over it and disconnect it completely, resulting in minutes of black screen or just short enough to trip out recorders, used by viewers to avoid missing news and other favourite programmes?
Back in the olden days, the ancient era of analogue TV, the dark times, technical hitches like that would be frequent, almost weekly occurrences. Now the reliability of technology makes any hiccup notable enough to become a blog post!
“At the end of the day though, it’s the News anchor who has the toughest ride, and Jen Keyte’s calm professionalism, under considerable pressure was faultless.’
What did she have to do – read the autocue again!?!?
Why did it take so long for them to roll a commerical break!?! I can’t believe there is one cable that goes from the control room to presentation – and they found it, were able to replace it in 3 minutes!!!?
What a mess.
It’s too bad when Seven News tried again, it wasn’t live.
I would like to welcome Melbourne viewers to the our world of ‘Rural Digital FTA TV’
Not good for7. I was watching 7 news and flicked over to 9 and stayed but will return tonight. In all honesty there is not a lot of difference between the two of them.