Five Breakdown

Not the most exciting of breakdowns - the Gadget Show's audio was stuttering at the start of the programme. They cut to an extended version of the break bumper animation for about 20 seconds, then rejoined the programme.

No apology of any kind, neither a generic recorded announcement nor a caption. Presumably this tells us that there's no live announcer these days, but somebody is looking after the output and noticed the problem relatively quickly. Seems a bit poor for an analogue terrestrial broadcaster.

Not related to the breakdown, but more the lack of live announcer.
Due to cricket highlights, tonight's 7 o'clock news was a 5 minute update before 7. The announcer introduced it as 'today's 5 News with Emma Crosby', to which the presenter had to say "Good evening, I'm Polly Whitehead", it made everything seem very amateurish.

I thought Five's announcers were always live. Or is it not like that anymore?

Not since Dirty Des took over. They seem to be live going into Neighbours most of time as far as I know.

Actually, there was live continuity yesterday. From 1.15pm till 11pm.