Channel 4 Breakdown

C4 is still played out from Horseferry Road, by the same staff as before, but they're now employed by Red Bee.

I don't really think that's any different from how Channel 4 would have handled it before, though. Perhaps it would have been handled differently had it been during prime time, with more staff around - but around midnight, there would be fewer editorial staff around to consult. I reckon the pres team made a good move, and the only slip-up was displaying the wrong caption for a bit.

Totally agree! ........ but then again there might be a reason for that!

There must have been someone 'editorial' around to have made the decision in the first place.
They are a major national TV network, no matter what time of day, they should have someone empowered with responsibility to initiate proper procedures.
Sorry, but the way they handled it just showed utter contempt for the viewers, but that seems to be the order of the day these days for 'Pres' depts in all UK broadcasters.

Put yourself in the shoes of the pres director that evening.
The news of MJ's death was only beginning to filter through at the time the programme went on air. It's possible that the director hadn't watched the programme all the way through, and only had the compliance form for guidance. That gives a rather limited amount of time time to decide whether the item would be offensive, and certainly no time to edit it.
The channel hadn't announced MJ's death, nor was it likely to (because you'd expect a news presenter to do that, not a continuity director). What do you want them to do? Fade out the programme and say "we're not showing you the end of TNT because it was rude to Michael Jackson, and we just found out he died"?
Feigning technical problems may be a little disingenuous, but it got them out of a potential sticky situation, and I'm not even sure that someone higher up would have come up with a better solution given the circumstances.

The only other option they probably had was to run a second "copy" of the programme cued to start at the end of the MJ sketch and try to cut to the second copy at a suitable point before the sketch started. It would probably have been just as messy, and would have left them with 5 minutes to fill.

According to posters on Digital Spy and a comment on my YouTube video, the programme continued on Channel 4 HD but the sound was cut.

I'm a bit confused as to whether the show was recorded that night or on a Tuesday - future shows are listed as recording on Tuesdays but I'm not sure that applied to the first three episodes.

I suppose it depends how it was delivered to C4 - if they realised prior to the break, then you'd hope there'd be time to either make a digital edit, or have a second copy cued up after the joke and (as it turned out) just before the end credits.

It wasn't an especially offensive joke, just a rather silly sketch - in my opinion no reason not to run it other than the obvious fallout they'd get from Media Guardian and Mail readers.

Argh!

I think it was more the fact the story was developing at that precise moment that impacted on it. I can understand under those circumstances, and I can also understand the rather clumsy way it was handled on that basis.

I take it Channel 4 didn't have a newsflash, as there would have been no-one on duty and they wouldn't have brought people back into the studio for it.

IIRC isn't Channel 4 HD a simulcast? How come the "emergency logo" didn't air?

I don't know. Was this a HD show or was it just shown upscalled? If it was true HD then maybe it would have been played out from a different source which the CA team forgot about.