Severe Problems on Look East

A whole half-hour of complete chaos this evening on Look East. A fair bit of reading, but well worth it. I reckon this could win an award (if such an award existed) for worst tv balls-up of the year.

I was watching in the west of the region. The programme was coming live from Bedford and the programme started with audio feedback problems. Everytime we came back to the live scene, nothing could be heard apart from the recurring sound of the last report for a few seconds.

In the sub-opt from cambridge, not one single report could be played and the picture from the studio kept jumping and strobing. We ended up ditching the opt and throwing back to Norwich mid-report.

Back to Stewart in Bedford (still with audio trouble) and now, he can't play any reports. He tries to throw to the pre-recorded weather but he can't do that. He fumbles for about 20 seconds and ends off walking through a door to chat with the Mayor of Bedford in another room. But the camera's can't follow him and we end up staying with the scene from the original camera, which get's detached from the tripod and placed on the floor. We stay with a shot from the floor for about 15 seconds.

After the impromtu conversation with the mayor, we can now try with the report again. It works, after a short pause on screen but the audio is still feeding back and the whole report (an interview with Gordon Brown) is echoed.

The programme overuns because of the problems, we ditch out of the report mid interview, Stewart thanks the viewers for their patience and we throw into the post-national news trails (we don't see the national round-up).

A complete tit's up. But where did the problem lie? Since there were problems in three seperate locations, what would have caused it all?

I rather wish I had my capture card running for the bit when they were trying to show the interview with Prescott.

I'm guessing they were too busy trying to get the interview to play to notice that Stewart had gone back to the mayor, thus not changing to the appropiate camera. Though it would have made some sense if the cameraman had used some innitative and followed Stuart back into the room, I'm guessing it may have been possible as the camera wasn't fixed to a tripod. Even if we did see the crew that were still in the other room, instead of very shakey camera work before putting the camera on the floor.

Yes, it was funny wasn't it. Made even more so with Stewart saying "I do hope you can see us".

Why on earth do they put cameras on the floor anyway?

I wonder if at point he could hear in his ear piece someone saying (along the lines of) "Oh heck, quick switch the cameras". It did show how proffesional Stewart is as a presenter though.

As for putting cameras on the floor surely the cameraman should have been aware that it was possible the camera was still broadcasting, especially as they had been having technical problems.

Must have been a day of it....... North west Tonight had problems to with the autocue breaking, gordon unsure of the running order during the sport and then we could see dianne walking into shot in front of the screen before we cut to a report.

I saw that , i couldnt quite believe it . I had the impression that the camera was unattended as it didnt move and we had this surreal view of the floor.

I would have stayed with it but i was watching EMT who were having a very quiet news day .

"As for putting cameras on the floor surely the cameraman should have been aware that it was possible the camera was still broadcasting, especially as they had been having technical problems. "

had you considered that in this multi-skilled age that the cameraman might have had to put down the camera to go and try to sort out another problem.... It is very bad practice to wander off leaving a camera unnattended on a tripod.
It sounds like they were having a hell of a time

*Out Take TV* researchers hitting the phones.

Looking at it on-line, what happened was that the presenter was left standing in a room with nothing to go to - no report, no weather so he went through to the only thing he had which was the guest who was in the next room. However they didn't cut to the camera in the next room and the camera operator, assuming he wasn't live to air put the camera down (after all he had nothing to point it at). The camera(wo)man picked up the camera after realising

I know it was the highlight of the programme but surely not broadcasting the Gordon Brown interview at all would have been a better option

If you haven't got a tripod that's usually the only place to put it

Looks to me as though they were having problems with the vision mixing in the van. They may have been feeding the wrong source to line, ie the output of a single camera rather than the output of the vision mixer. That explains why the entire Mayor interview was done without a single shot of the mayor.

The after show enquiry is probably still going on

The programme's problems made it into the local newspapers. You can read the article here:

http://www.lsnmedia.co.uk/bos/page.html?pageID=3&storyID=37663