E4 Faults

E4 has been having some problems tonight. At about 7.55pm I tuned into see a breakdown caption and various cuts. I put Friends on at 8pm to see it going to a black screen with the DOG in the corner. Friends came back on but in 16:9 stretched.

It cut in the middle of a sentence to ads and at the end of the ads, straight into Friends (again in 16:9). Friends finished at 8.22pm and it cut to ads. Mid-break, an E4 ident appeared with the announcer telling us Big Brother live was coming on and it cut straight to the feed (no sponsorship or titles). After about 7 minutes, it cut to a large E4 logo animating on and off with the announcer telling us "Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Just goes to show we're actually live!".

E4 ident appeared and straight to Friends (in 16:9 for a few minutes). Its now back in 4:3 but with no DOG.

A few problems tonight then!

Just tuned into +1 and a black screen awaited me!

Looks like theres no ads either.

Strange that the E4+1 DOG is gone aswell. I thought that would be placed over the previous hour's broadcast.

Now showing a large E4 logo (similar to what was shown at about 8.30pm).

Yes, very strange. Now back to the OC...

More problems on E4! Animated logo, announcer, Big Brother live, Appletiser, E4 logo, Big Brother live.

Everything seems to be going wrong!

E4+1 at the moment: Frozen Avon logo.

Wow - just what is going on at E4 towers tonight?! They must be in a pretty bad state if they're totally off air for 5 minutes (could have been longer, that's all I was able to catch) and now handing over to Elstree for unscheduled BB live!



EDIT: Scheduled programming seems to be back with Lost now. How long that keeps up is anyone's guess though...

E4 is back to normal (no DOG though). E4+1 is showing what I described in my first post.

Basically when The OC went off (cut to black, back to scene before scene faded out - don't think it was a end of scene shot but may have been), it was about 4mins of black!! Then a stretched E4 caption for a couple of minutes before a black/purple split screen (probably for the ECP) then the announcer popped up with a "Programmes Continue Shortly..." slide. "I'll let you know whenever we can get back to The OC, hopefully as soon as possible."

Few seconds later and the show comes back.

And probably for the first time ever, no squeeze, no anno OC credits!

End of credits and Avon still cuts the announcer out - "As you can se..." Four minutes on, still with that caption, my timer cut off.

Don't know what system they're using there but it needs a serious review - especially if they're unable to put up an apology caption and the announcer unable to talk over any sequence.

Edit: Just watched the apology at the end of Big Brother into Friends. Very nicely scripted!! And yep, I am now assured that E4 continuity is indeed live

I've noticed that before. I remember a couple of weeks ago an apology caption appeared but it then instead of staying on the caption, it cut to black for 5 minutes.

Hopefully they'll do something about it soon.

On Saturday (I think) they also had problems with the Big Brother interactive feed.

Instead of appearing during E4 programming then crashing to the ads it was doing the opposite, only appearing during the ad breaks and then crashing to the scheduled programming.

Huh! Welcome to the 21st century where "technology is better than humans"