Stv off air again is Itv also?

Yes, I remember that. But I meant omitting an ad break that was scheduled is almost unheard of (because the advertisers would have paid for the spot). It happens during breaking news specials and other unscheduled sensitive content such as tributes but for sports over-runs they would normally include the break somewhere.

If the post-Cheltenham break was shown during the programme itself that would explain things. But it wouldn’t explain why ITV needed to run an ad break and STV didn’t. They were following a common schedule.

I still think there was a miscommunication about which ad break was getting dropped,

That seems likely, yes.

What appears to have happened here is STV's automation has attempted to take Tipping Point from the network feed at the wrong time, whilst network were in a break.

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 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.



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.

Black could mean all number of failures. A logo gives confidence the circuit is still up, and the 60 second clock shows it's not on a freeze (or at least gives the transmission controller 60 seconds to react with a slate in the event of failure). The clock is also there if they need to manually come out of a break for whatever reason. I'm surprised it is the ITV logo and not something more generic, but when all the regions except STV are now ITVplc I guess it's majority rule! The clock has made it to air once or twice but I can't find any youtube illustrations of it, sorry.

I *think* the network black event much shorter and is there to hide any slight glitches in the opting process, but don't quote me on that!