TV Breakdown Appreciation Thread

I like breakdowns. I like it when a show goes horribly wrong and they have to go to a breakdown slide and some music. My favorite breakdown it from BBC in 2000 when they've had that massive power cut.



I also like the ITV Breakdowns even when it's a live programme like when ITV News at Ten had a fire alarm and had to go off the air. That meant we had 13 Minutes of Generic ITV Music and we didn't have to hear Tom Bradley for the rest of the night.



But I want to know what your favourite Breakdowns are?

I guess the classic one was when Lambing Live fell off air, they eventually decided to play an episode of Coast which didn't make it past the title sequence because of a sound fault.

The ultimate one is BBC1 December 2002, isn't it? When the Wallace and Gromit theme played over one of the dancer idents, followed by an abrupt cut to a fault side and an announcer barely hiding her laughter. Sadly missing from Youtube but I saw it online years ago.

I’m partial to the Something for the Weekend breakdown because the reason for it happening is so hilarious.

https://youtu.be/Z7xKZnkmTJk

Also Talking Telephone Numbers...

(The url for which I can never find. Anyone?)

TV Whirl is your friend, doesn't have that dodgy ident unfortunately though: https://www.tvwhirl.co.uk/misc/mistakes/?clip=2437

From the same site, CBBC giving us an accidental sneak peek of the presenters huddled at the back, reading their script, when the credit squeeze is set off mid-programme: https://www.tvwhirl.co.uk/misc/mistakes/?clip=2436

You're welcome.

There's also Simon Potter's first day on CBBC, VT failure and his attempt at filling was not exactly brilliant. He said on the anniversary show that his lack of preparedness didn't go down well with the bosses.

The spectacular one that hit BBC News 24 so hard they effectively did an early hand-over to World News (which itself struggled later that night with dodgy VT's as well)



It's a shame nobody saved video of the entire broadcast. Hwu Edwards really showed his skill that night as he professionally continued the broadcast but notably quicker to make sure he didn't go over-time. He even kept the trademark starting pose (which I recall learning about that night thanks to a twitter account that keeps track of it)

I always like breakdowns where there's nowhere to hide. Or to put it less sinisterly, when the channel holds his hands up and is completely transparent about what's going on. To put It one way, it "humanises" the channel when they're not pretending to be a flawlessly well-oiled machine. Long gone are the days of "we're just moving the film to another projector" and instead we have moments like when The One Show was taken off air due a fire alarm and the CA inconspicuously blamed "technical problems". The BBC regions are a little open when things go belly up, but I feel Network are far more "It's okay, just give us a minute, please don't go away!"

Some old clips from the Broom Cupboard are prime examples of what I mean. The first one shows Andy Crane frantically controlling the desk to get himself back on air when a transition to Neighbours goes belly up before he openly asks whoever's next door if he should carry on. The one below has Debbie Flint met with a dodgy projection of Rocky and Bullwinkle and you can actually see whoever's on VT trying to fix it on the monitor in the background.

The time where Scotland Today's brand new digital studio failed with spectacular results was gold. It was on YouTube until fairly recently before STV got it pulled for copyright.

Am I alone in thinking that Andy comes across as a bit of a tit here? He was in as a guest and probably wouldn't have had talkback, surely Simon would have covered the cock up in a much calmer way had Andy not panicked and jumped in?