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Wankety Wank!!!!!!!!!11111111

TV Gameshows / TV Presentation

On Friday, Challenge did the best thing since they acquired the rights to Knightmare again: the start of a repeat run of Les Dawson Blankety Blank episodes. I honestly – no joke, no exaggeration – count them as some of the best, funniest television ever made.

Sadly, take a look at the video above, taken from the end of the second episode. At 18 seconds in, I’m afraid I made an extraordinary noise.

To Challenge’s credit, they apologised – if only all TV stations would do that when things like this happened. Despite my childish headline, they get huge bonus points for that, and it’s something other channels could learn from. The problem is, it’s not even that unusual for programmes to be ruined in this fashion – and most of the time, there’s not a snifter of an apology.

So, a plea. To all television schedulers in this world – and, indeed, anyone who happens to pass an eye over end credit DVE offsets (they are generally scheduled these days, rather than an operator manually pressing a button) – please, please get this right. There is very little which hurts viewer experience more than misplaced credit shrinking over the final part – the climax – of a show. It absolutely kills it.

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CELEBRATING 75 GLORIOUS YEARS

TV Gameshows / TV Presentation

So, you want a more inappropriately placed end voiceover than the one on GOLD the other day? How about this one, taken from tonight on Challenge+1?

Well done Challenge. You have LITERALLY managed to disrespect the dead.

It’s fairly simple. If you’re using pre-recorded voiceovers, make sure you preview everything to check your timings are right. If you can’t be arsed to do that, at least place them 15 seconds or so before the end, so you’re unlikely to crash the programme.

Don’t make it look like you don’t give a stuff about the channel, or the viewers. If you can keep the dead out of your incompetence as well, so much the better.

(EDIT: Listening again, only just noticed – the voiceover repeats halfway through! Ouch…)

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A camera in shot on Coronation Street

TV Drama

A thrilling post title, no? And I deliver on my promises. Taken from an episode shown early this year, on January 3rd:

A camera in Coronation Street

Amazing.

UPDATE (02/01/15): Clearly EastEnders has decided it doesn’t want to miss out on all the fun. Broadcast on New Year’s Day 2015, as seen by Jonathan Bufton – slightly less visible, but still there on the left:

A camera in EastEnders

This is clearly the best post ever on this site.

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How GOLD ruins programmes, Part #367234

TV Comedy / TV Presentation

Whilst we’re on the subject of GOLD transmission errors, the below – broadcast yesterday – brings me out in FISTS OF RAGE. The dinnerladies episode Minnellium – and just as we get to the discovery that Anita was the one who abandoned her baby:

One of the most heart-wrenching endings they ever had to an episode: ruined. The last joke in the episode: ruined. One episode of dinnerladies: ruined. All because they triggered their pre-recorded voiceover in the usual place, rather than actually checking the end of the episode to see if it fitted.

Brilliant, GOLD, well done.

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Stick Something INCORRECT On

TV Presentation

Oh dear, GOLD’s going through an identity crisis. Broadcast at around 7:40pm on the 19th October:

For anyone wondering how that happened, I’m fairly certain that’s a dynamically created trail – not a pre-created piece of video, but automatically generated by the playout server. Clearly, the right schedule information, audio, and video clips were present – but the wrong channel graphics were selected…

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