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Did You See Miroslav Klose’s Goal? Neither Did We!

June 25th, 2008 | By: Daryl | 14 Comments »

I think we all mistakenly believe that technology rules the world these days. If you can get internet on your phone then surely we can take the television broadcast of a European Championship for granted no? Well, no. Because mother nature delivered a little reminder today that this is her house, and we’re just visiting.

Huge huge storms in Austria (lightning, thunder, 60mph winds, torrential rain, that kind of thing) took out International Broadcast Centre in Vienna and killed the global feed of Germany vs Turkey. Just flat out killed it. The game itself was miles away in Basel, Switzerland, but the pictures are broadcast via Vienna.

So every station in the world except Swiss TV and Al-Jazeera was left with nothing, and the thrilling end to an enthralling game was mostly ruined for TV viewers.

On the BBC, they wisely switched to their radio commentary which is obviously designed for people who can’t see the action. But on American channel ESPN they were apparently reduced to showing Julie Foudy and Tommy Smyth sitting in the studio twiddling their thumbs. Any hope of ESPN pretending they had commentators actually attending the game and commentating live - as opposed to watching on a screen from Bristol, Connecticut - ended there and then.

If anyone was watching outside the US and UK, please let us know how your broadcaster dealt with suddenly having no football to show you. I’d be fascinated to hear who did what.

From what I saw (or didn’t see) most of the world missed Miroslav Klose’s header that made it 2-1 and a good chunk of viewers missed Semih Şentürk’s equalizer too. The feed seemed to be restored just in time for everyone to see Phillip Lahm fire Germany to victory.

Maybe we should all take today as a bit of a lesson. It’s great watching games on TV and all, but the only way to really and truly guarantee seeing a game is to get yourself inside the stadium.

I’m sure ESPN will agree.

Tags: Austria, Basel, ESPN, Euro 2008 News, Germany, global feed, storm, Switzerland, Tommy Smyth, Turkey, tv, Vienna

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Comments

By Wnuck | June 25th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

“If anyone was watching outside the US and UK, please let us know how your broadcaster dealt with suddenly having no football to show you. I’d be fascinated to hear who did what.”
The German station just switched to SF1 (swiss TV) for the rest of the game, so there where just a few minutes lost. Unfortunately the commentator was a few seconds early… could be worse.

Posted from Germany

By Andy | June 25th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

In Canada, On TSN, we had our commentators repeattingly apologize and twiddle their thumbs as well.

Posted from Canada

By Bense | June 25th, 2008 at 6:21 pm

We saw all the important stuff. But you should have had a camera at the moment the host broadcasting network the German TV transmitted to millions of viewers along the “Fanmeilen” and the 3 minutes he did radio commentary.

That was crazy. But then again, the outcome wasn’t. With the Germans, you always know what you’ll get. Repeat after me: Don’t dare to write off the Germans. Not after equalizers. Not even after being down by one.

Oh good lord, somebodies’ gonna hate me really bad for that expression, but let’s say I’ve jumped on that panzer bandwagon to Vienna.

By Deluxe | June 25th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

In Mexico, ESPN Deportes cut to images of German fans in the Fanzone in Basel, standing in awe as we all did, then jumped to the studio, and then to replays of the goals (the ones we already saw, not the ones we lost). TV Azteca just ran the same images of German and Turkish fans over and over again, while in the background commentator Jesús Humberto López made my ears bleed with his lousy German.

By Jenica | June 25th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

In China, the commentators of CCTV apologized. The TV station replayed the German,Turkish goal scoring video over and over again and the video of Lahm brought down by the Turkish dude, then the commentators said that the referee was so unfair about that judgement and it should be given a free kick or penalty kick or something. After that, i went to sleep, cos i don’t know how long it’s gonna take…( this match was broadcasted at 2:30 am in Beijing time)

Posted from China

By Johannes | June 25th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

“It’s great watching games on TV and all, but the only way to really and truly guarantee seeing a game is to get yourself inside the stadium.”

hahahaha, you kill me….if you can’t effort EURO 1,000, or work for one of the sponsors, you don’t have a lot of choice !

By Yevy | June 25th, 2008 at 7:47 pm

I am just shocked that it wasn’t an isolated ESPN screw up.

Posted from United States

By TJ | June 25th, 2008 at 11:31 pm

but how come only Swiss TV and Al-Jazeera were airing the game then?

Posted from United Arab Emirates

By Melanie | June 26th, 2008 at 1:13 am

@TJ : It was played in a Swiss Stadium so the Swiss television company had access to the TV signals before they were sent to the Int. Broadcast Centre in Vienna…
the only “problem” was that the TV commentary came over the phone and the pictures had a delay of about 3 seconds, so we heard that Klose scored but the pictures still showed Lahm with the ball… same happened with the equalizer and the 3:2…
It was a bit confusing.

Posted from Germany

By JC | June 26th, 2008 at 1:23 am

ok swiss TV having access makes sense, but why Jazeera?

Posted from United Arab Emirates

By Melanie | June 26th, 2008 at 3:10 am

maybe because they have all their money on Swiss Bank Accounts, and therefore receive special treatment from the Swiss

Posted from Germany

By Jan | June 26th, 2008 at 3:12 am

Good point. Why force all TV stations to take the signal from Vienna, while Swiss TV and Jazeera are allowed to take it right from the stadium?

By diana | June 26th, 2008 at 6:54 am

The situation here in Singapore is that (I think this came about during the second transmission breakdown) there are a message on the TV screen apologising for the breakdown. Ended up I have to depend on Daryl’s liveblogging of the tournament to know what was going on. By the time minutes after the third transmission breakdown, the match was already over and I got the images of the German players celebrating being in the final.

And throughout today on the channel which is showing the tournament, there was an explanation (the statements run at the bottom of the screen) explaining what led to the breakdown in transmission and said that it will show the repeat of the match match in full (there was a repeat in the afternoon which I watched).

It’s really scary not to be able to watch the key moments ‘live’.

Jan, contary to the initlal reports, it has been revealed today that Al-Jazeera had some loss of the signal as well. Here - http://sport.sg.msn.com/Football/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1526093

Posted from Singapore