BBC Two’s live coverage of the UEFA Women’s Champions League match between Chelsea and Barcelona was disrupted for about ten minutes this evening due to a power failure at the stadium.
Almost 35 minutes into the match, vision and audio cut out, quickly followed by the appearance of colour bars.
About ten seconds later, BBC Two invoked its breakdown procedure and the channel’s standard breakdown caption appeared.
On Network BBC Two, the graphic remained on screen animating in silence for almost a minute-and-a-half before the announcer arrived, offering an apology and cued some music.
After about eight minutes of breakdown, the announcer told us there had been a power failure at the stadium.
The music then continued for another minute or so. The announcer then informed us that live coverage would now resume.
And so it did. In fact, the match had been stopped due to the power issues, so viewers at home didn’t miss too much of the action.
BBC Two Wales took the first 25 seconds of the Network breakdown before going in circuit and covering the remainder of the breakdown.
The BBC Wales announcer provided a verbal apology on a regular basis and kept viewers informed about what was going on behind the scenes.
Over on BBC Two Northern Ireland, a somewhat odd sequence of events.
They took the Network breakdown for the first 30 seconds or so.
It then looks as though they went in circuit, showing the stadium output (just a black screen but with audio of some sort), plus a branded ‘Temporary Fault’ lower-third.
They then cut to a loop of a generic, animated BBC Two Northern Ireland logo, which remained for over four-and-a-half minutes, with an occasional verbal apology from the announcer.
The ‘Temporary Fault’ lower-third put in another brief appearance also.
We then got a few seconds of the stadium output again, before crashing back to the Network breakdown.
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FEATURE IMAGE:
PICTURED: BBC Two breakdown graphic. COPYRIGHT: BBC.
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