One hopes
they at least got the poor kid's name wrong, too...
A glitch on BBC News that accidentally labelled a child as a recovering alcoholic is a symptom of endemic problems with the Salford Media City's software, The Reg has been told by a BEEB insider, though BBC dismisses the mistake as a "teething problem". A captioning slip-up caused the image below to be broadcast on BBC News …
You'd think but, alas, no.
Also, the notion that this was a "computer/software issue" have to be taken with a HUGE pinch of salt: The software doesn't make up the subject name nor the by-line caption: a BBC production person has to input that information (the fact that the producer/director is unable to stop/alter the caption immediately prior or during live transmission is clearly an urgent one, along with don't they pre-/re-view these items anymore, prior to tranmission?)
My "guess", here, is that someone entered that detail, on the basis that it was kind of funny and, as the kid looked like to that person she'd been "on the sauce"... and...
Upshot, I find it VERY difficult to believe that it was an "accident", especially given that there were no other news reports carried on BBC NW Tonight about alcoholics nor alcoholism during that broadcast...
I tend to agree with AC, this sort of thing is why you must always act professionally at work, even when you don't think it matters. There are countless people who've sent emails to their boss starting "Dr Mr Wanker", with the intention of removing it before ending the mail, then forgetting. There are many documents that accidentally get sent to problem customers saying exactly what people think of them and countless examples of Doctors having to explain to patients why they wrote "NFN" or "TSBUNDY" on their medical records.
It's all very funny at the time, but rather less so when you reap the consequences.
You should try reading the news ticker on the ridiculous 60s News they broadcast on BBC3. It is always full of spelling and gramatical errors, often you can't even tell what they were trying to say.
The presenters aren't much better at speaking either. You'd think the basic requirement for a news presenter would be the ability to read the autocue and talk clearly without tripping up over your words or saying the wrong ones. But not on BBC3!
I don't know if an editor can take a caption off screen when it's part of the tape - a big button to superimpose a plain BBC banner would do at least - or they could just stop the blessed thing playing. Otherwise it's "Russell Howard's Good News" next stop.
Wikipedia: "In 1982 darts player Jocky Wilson's picture was displayed on Top of the Pops during a performance of "Jackie Wilson Said (I'm in Heaven When You Smile)" by Dexys Midnight Runners, apparently an in-joke on the part of the production staff." I thought it was supposed to be a simple, quite large mistake. I think the BBC had already had novelty records like Jasper Carrott's "Magic Roundabout" (or not, probably not allowed) and they assumed this was another one.
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On the the subject of TOTP's infamous "Jockey Wilson Said", whilst watching the re-runs of the 1977 episodes the other day I noticed in the chart run-down that the picture for the band Rose Royce had a very Life On Mars brown Ford Cortina Mk3 driving through a car wash!
Think about RR's big hit around that time...
Never mind the 'red lorry, yellow lorry' nonsense - just remember to say 'teething troubles' when you really mean 'bone-headed design flaws in half-tested systems that were signed off by the people who wouldn't have to use them'. But 'teething troubles' sounds so much snappier, doesn't it?
Having had some very modest exposure to live entertainment in the distant past, I can't ofhand think of ANY producer / director / stage manager who wouldn't go absolutely apeshit at not being able to control what went out right up until the last minute.
Having been involved in the move of a 24-hour news broadcaster, I can assure you it's more complicated, and with more room for error, than plugging in the lighting board at your local Am Dram society.
We had a near miss on needlessly plunging the nation into mourning
These gaffes are endemic on BBC News. Typically the caption gets stuck and is used for more than one photo/video loop. Of course, the highly-paid-autocue-readers (which some refer to as "newscasters") never apologise for these gaffes, but look suitably embarrassed if a particularly bad one occurs.
See https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/uk.tech.broadcast/E-fvu8CSWGA
Having been in the ITV news room (many years ago) where Trevor McDonut was reading the news, they are highly paid for a reason. I couldn't believe how fast he could change the next item without missing a beat, whilst some manic producer was jabbering in his ears. It's just NOT as simple as reading an autocue.
You mean "not fixed", "still broken", "current problem".
My car at the garage my be "in the process of being fixed" - to me, that means I'm not driving it due to the fault - as far as the end user is concerned it's not working.
Management spin rather than an acknowledgement of the issues.
I got an offer to work on some broadcast software a few years ago. So I read the specification, and it was retarded.
It was plainly written by broadcast people with no software experience. Rather than just stating what they wanted in plain English and getting someone competent to define the software interfaces, they'd attempted to define everything and it was a mass of contradictions and foolishness. Software written to the "specification" had no hope of reliably communicating with anything else.
So I turned down the job. Working on things that are doomed to fail is soul destroying.
No plug intended - I'm just researching for my boss...
...But if you look at Blackmagicdesign's ATEM's stuff (video switcher), and have a squint at the manual*, that's absolutely one of the best, clearest user manuals for a (very) complex bit of kit I've EVER seen in my life! I've gotta learn this for the new (temp.) job....
* http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail/?os=win&sid=3962&pid=3971&leg=false
ATEM Switchers Operation Manual
Dunno how anyone could, with a few hours practice, screw it up!
The Salford operation uses a piece of kit called Mosart which is a lot more automated than the systems they had at Oxford Road. So I think it's quite plausible that if somebody has screwed up and put the wrong caption reference into the running order that getting it off the screen quickly will be awkward to do.