BBC Two’s late-night snooker highlights show off air for almost fourteen minutes

Highlights of the day’s play at the 2021 UK Snooker Championships fell off air at 12.28am tonight.

After two minutes of black screen and silence, a breakdown caption finally appeared.

BBC Two announcer Siân Polhill-Thomas provided live verbal updates during the breakdown. Music was played but was barely audible and also occasionally suffered dropouts.

After almost fourteen minutes off air, the highlights programme resumed at 12.42am.

BBC Two Northern Ireland was timeshifting the Snooker highlights programme. In the video below, you can see how they edited out the network breakdown:

As a result of editing out the breakdown, BBC Two Northern Ireland was in a position to join the extended highlights programme fifteen minutes earlier than planned:

Acknowledgements