I second that it's clear the automation was programmed to go straight from the racing to Tipping Point, but ITV/UTV had clearly gone to a break, so it took the network feed live at the wrong time. It would appear there was a breakdown in communication between ITV/Red Bee and STV regarding the timings, but it could also very easily be human error whilst making the playlist changes to accomodate the late running event.
The issue could have definitely been handled better than it was. I imagine STV's transmission operator would have contacted Red Bee over talkback or phone to find out what was going on, so should have found out they had 4 minutes to fill. It shouldn't have been too hard to quickly throw in promos and perhaps the ident again to allow them to come off the slide a fill the gap, rather than keeping it up for 4 mintues.
It would be interesting to compare the breaks on STV to those on ITV. As mentioned before ITV often run 'fake' breaks to fill time, where they take a break but only air promos. It may be that ITV decided to take a 'fake' break during one of the gaps in the racing to save one of the planned ad breaks to be aired after, but STV ran their planned break at this time.
The ITV slate you see is what the network playlist puts out whilst the regional transmitters opt away for breaks and under normal circumstances would never be seen. 60 seconds before the end of the break the network playlist outputs a VT clock - which is only really of use to STV now.
I always thought the network feed went to black during the break. Having seen their Morpheus automation in the past, the breaks definitely used to be in the playlist as 'Network Black Event'. Clearly it doesn't.