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From: tvrewind
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  • Stupid network

  • How does a major network make such a huge gaffe? That's just unbelievable!

  • technical error? yeah, right....they shouldve just said some idiot put the wrong tape in.....bet that dude or chick was fired ASAP.

  • I loved this mini series in the 70s! Anyone got it on tape & can post it?

  • A false start on NBC - Five yard penalty, still second down.

  • NBC still hasn't changed. THEY SUCK!! THEY ARE THE WORST NETWORK IN HISTORY! Last night, they pulled yet another HEIDI- with USF- ND! PATHETIC NETWORK!

  • HAHA NBC Fail

  • I had no idea this happened. Interesting.

  • What if it would have been a porn flick, it would have taken them 17 minutes to figure that out too LOL

  • I wonder if the same person responsible for that gaffe also worked for NBC during the "Heidi Bowl" fiasco?

  • @ebf1957 I don't know, but RCA, founders of the National Broadcasting Company, were still the owners of that network at that time.

  • @1985OldSkool

    Really Crappy Appliance

  • @ebf1957 True. General Electric did not take over NBC until 1986.

  • Must have been one epic mini-series if it took 17 minutes for just ONE person to notice.

  • Coming to NBC: DEAD AIR TUESDAY! Three hours of a black screen! It's sure to win an Emmy!

  • Talk about fuck-up!

  • Well, at least they gave the East Coast a sneak preview of what was to come the following night lol! :-D

    I take journalism classes, and things like this would make my teachers cringe. At least Howard got through it like a pro.

  • No drug testing then. lol

  • This isn't any worse than NBC giving Conan O'Brien the Tonight Show by mistake.

  • I hadn't heard about this. How funny. Did any one get disciplined for this?

  • At least they had the decency to admit their mess-up. Heck, I doubt most people would stop it in the middle and switch out (as well as call attention to their error during the switch-out) to the right program. Likely, they'd just say, "Screw it, let it run."

  • Ooooooops...

  • Has your Dad moved on from being an MCO? I'm also an MCO too, I've been one for 6 1/2 years with 3 different jobs. When you mess up, it's really bad, I've been there. Luckily, I've either had to play a different because the one I had didn't get there in time, or was recorded so badly.

  • @LaurenLover81 Have endured my modest share of nightmares too,

    but in the annals, this is one of the more impressive displays I've ever

    seen. Nowadays theyd likely switch over point blank, and the story would unfold

    on the local news.

  • @noahf67 I'll admit, my most severe mistake was airing 2 wrong infomercials and not realizing it until 4 hours later. Told my supervisor, he was cool with it. But the station owner was not too pleased. I wasn't fired, but I did get a stern memo on how much money I cost the station, and was put on notice if it happened again. Definitely careful from that point on, I became their most valuable employee by the time the station was sold over a year later, but I was laid-off by the new owners.

  • @LaurenLover81 Sorry to hear it, but true indeed, all it takes is one

    wrong move to set you straight for life. Built some powerful reflexes

    as the result of just one.

  • @LaurenLover81, He didn't move on because he died. But he told me that being a MCO was a very stressful job. I remember he had to fill some time once and showed a old episode Starsky and Hutch,problem was they didn't have the rights to air it anymore. Oops!

  • @LaurenLover81, Forgot to add he was a MCO for our Nashville,Tennessee ABC affilaite WKRN. Its been owned by General Electric, Knight Ridder and now Young broadcasting I think.

  • @beckigreen Wow, see, I would have figured such MC access wouldn't

    have been possible if that were the case. Good grief...!

  • @beckigreen Wow, I'm really sorry that your dad passed on. You're right, MCO is a very stressful job, especially at very, small stations, and those stations where management/ ownership is not consistent, or stations where maintanance is not the best. I aired a talk show once for 1 segment, and had to change to an evergreen show when the current one crapped out. Plus, I also dealt with incompetent MCO's.

  • @LaurenLover81 What is an "evergreen" show?

  • @FutureNewsAnchor Evergreen is a generic episode of a program (mainly first-run syndication), used whenever something goes wrong with a current episode of program, for whatever reason. It's used as a last resort back-up when all else fails with current episode feed that's unable to be taken.

  • @LaurenLover81 Thanks for clearing that up. Several of my local stations have had to air evergreen shows when technical difficulties prevented them from broadcasting their regularly scheduled newscasts. Case in point: On the night of Michael Jackson's death, my local FOX station, WYFX in Youngstown, Ohio had technical problems which caused them to postpone the 10PM news. They aired an episode of "The Simpsons" in its entirety, as well as part of a second one, after a 15-minute commercial break.

  • @FutureNewsAnchor Sounds like the news never made it to air that night. I've had to air the 1st commercial brk of a newscast before the news even started. Or sometimes the producers asked me to air an extra commercial because they weren't ready.

  • @LaurenLover81 Or maybe they needed some extra time to prepare the Michael Jackson story, since it broke right as the 6PM news wrapped up on the East Coast.

  • @FutureNewsAnchor hahahaah it the late 80's or even mid 80's wtov chanel 9 in steubenville ohio used to have wwf wresteling on on ssaturday night or may be even friday night but as a child i remember watching it and something happened maybe a video tape eating problem saw a simular problem with a vcr while it gotten hungry and ate a tape lol they lit a blank black screen air for about 10 mins and then a still frame of theer logo and nbc's logs aired then anounced they cont in part 2

  • @compwiz878 pt 2 .. and started running an episode of i think was the music show called solid gold comercial free even in its entirety was weird but they have had problems like that many other times so it probly common for tape machines to get hungry or the wrong tape to be played im sure it happens today to with the digital formats . ive heard this happen while listening to local radio stations that play mp3's or wut not and had to revert back to the dj pressing play on the cd player.

  • @compwiz878 pt 3 ive have seen it not long ago on other local tv stations

  • It probably went on so long because Master Control wasn't watching what he played. My dad was a master control for our ABC affiliate in Nashville from 75-86 and I went to work with him all the time. I will bet the MC got in trouble though.

  • @beckigreen But is it at all possible that MC had no awareness of program

    content, and were simply observing labels and leaders? Was something

    mislabeled...?

  • @noahf67< That could be it but I don't think its likely. I never heard my Dad say anything about running something because it was mislabeled.

    If it was not a case of being mislabeled I am sure The MCO caught a some Hell for this.

  • @beckigreen I'm sure there was an NCIS-style inquest about the whole thing

    the next morning. And I'm sure things were just a little less automated and

    humanly navigated back then.

  • @beckigreen I lived in the Nashville area and remember watching WNGE/WKRN through Jr. High & High School. My dad worked for GE, which owned WNGE, so we got to take a tour of the station back in 1980. I got a pic of myself on the news set w/ weatherman Tom Siler that day, and I remember seeing original PM Magazine hosts Meryll Rose & Andy Garmezy too.

  • @jehobden, Yep GE did own WNGE. Tom Siler was very short and I remember PM magazine too.

  • Howard Reig sounds pissed more than anything about the error. Even MTV has made errors like this in the past 5 or 6 years. In April 03, MTV aired seg.1 of RW/RR battle of the sexes twice when seg. 3 should've aired. Then in Feb. 06, MTV aired a previous season of RW/RR Inferno 2 for 2 segs, when they finally aired RW/RR Guantlet 2 in seg. 3, their current season at the time. And last May, MTV started THE HILLS 7 minutes late because a movie somehow ran over. After THE HILLS, MTV JIP'd MADE.

  • I think the programmer over there had probably partied too much at Studio 54 and snorted quite a bit of coke over there as well, it was quite popular at the time, LOL!

  • 17 minutes? It took them that long

    to figure it out?

  • That's late 70s NBC for you...

  • heh

  • Sounds like someone had a "LOOSE SCREW" for playing part 3 of LOOSE CHANGE> could you

    imagine something like that happening today on TV?  Neither can I!

  • How could they go so long before realizing this mistake? FAIL. lol

  • i agree 100%.....what a mistake...i am sure someone got fired for this

  • I betcha the phone lines were SMOKING that night with pissed of execs chopping heads left and right. What an embarrassment!

    I once saw a movie on TV that had to be started-over 6 times before they could get it right....but this was in Finland, so what do you expect!?

  • stuff like that scares me when i was a child for some reason lol like special announcements and stuff

  • I hear ya! Me too! Anytime anything was interrupted, I assumed there was something creepy going on... :D

  • @RevengeCreature

    I remember watching NBC when they did a special on Bing crosby's death.

    At the end the announcer says (loudly) "Wait A Minute" then the NBC "N" comes on and a voice says "This is the NBC Television Network". Johnny Carson was delayed a half hour. Creeped me out the "Wait a Minute". Wonder if anyone has a tape of that ?

  • @tom01757 I know what you mean. Those announcements used to freak me out as a small child, too! That, and the technical difficulty announcements. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

  • And if memory serves, the next time the NBC news magazine "Weekend" aired, it opened with a shot of three videotape decks sitting side by side and the announcer intoning, "The following program is being shown in the CORRECT order."

  • This is classic! The start of NBC becoming a national joke which took years to correct. The only bright spot is Howard Reig, who who does an excellent job informing the viewers of the error.

  • Wow...17 minutes. From the same network that gave us "Supertrain."

  • and "Here's Boomer!"

  • @CaptainDevereaux

    Also Pink Lady and Jeff.

  • I wonder if this was on a film reel or videotape?

  • LULZ!!!

  • In the words of Nelson: HAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

  • Yea..this was just par for the course at NBC during that time frame..they couldn't seem to do anything right.

  • A mistake of "Heidi Bowl" proportions!!!

    If I were the announcer, I would have been fired for laughing and saying, "Wow, part 3? How do you make a mistake like that? How many minutes into the movie...17?! REALLY?! Wow! What MORONS! Oh, we're going to start part 2...ok, viewers, on with the REAL part 2 of "Loose Change. Idiots!"

  • NBC was at a low point in its history for a lot of reasons... this was just one of them.

  • I remember when this aired. Several years later, NBC had another miniseries "Trade Winds" with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. NBC played the first two parts, but neglected to play the third. Never have seen Part 3. I did read the novelization of it.

  • Loose Change... HAHAHAHA

  • That was Mint! I wonder who was fired over that?!

  • I wonder if it was the same team responsible for "The Heidi Bowl."

    I had to favorite that!

  • When was the last time something like this happened? Why did this happen any why did it take them 17 minutes to correct their mistake?

  • Did they have to delay the late news? When football games run late, they delay the entire Sunday night schedule

  • Everything delayed 17 minutes late on the east coast and into Mountain zones, west coast was able to delay on time.

  • We already had something similar not too long ago: CTV in Canada ran the wrong episode of "Grey's Anatomy" instead of its season premiere!

  • The announcer mentioning that this was the wrong segment, was legendary staff announcer Howard Reig.

  • He sounds as if he was trying mightily not to laugh... what a pro.

    Just think -- without booth announcers, now they'd simply dump Part 3 and start Part 2 without even telling us what was happening.

  • Wouldn't want to be in BOC when that happened. I can imagine what the morning meeting the next day was like. I always hated hearing comments from the shoulda,woulda, coulda crew the next day.

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