Day the BBC’s TV sports ticker went rogue
AS football-related insults go, it could have been a lot worse.
But the BBC has apologised after a bizarre message appeared during a television news item, reading ‘Manchester United are rubbish’.
The jibe popped up on the news ticker at the bottom of the screen during a tennis update on the 9am to 10am news broadcast yesterday.
It was quickly followed by the phrase ‘Weather rain everywhere’, leading to even more confusion.
Later in the morning, a presenter apologised to any offended Manchester United fans. Annita Mcveigh said the mistake was made by someone learning how to use the ticker who was ‘writing random things not in earnest’. She explained: ‘A little earlier, some of you may have noticed something pretty unusual on the ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen with news making a comment about Manchester United, and I hope that Manchester United fans weren’t offended by it.
‘Let me just explain what was happening: Behind the scenes someone was training to learn how to use the ticker and to put text on the ticker, so they were just writing random things not in earnest and that comment appeared. So apologies if you saw that and you were offended and you’re a fan of Manchester United.
‘But certainly that was a mistake and it wasn’t meant to appear on the screen.’ The BBC added: ‘There was a technical glitch during training with our test ticker, which rolled over to live programming for a few seconds. We apologised for any offence caused on air.’
BBC presenter and Manchester City fan Clive Myrie tweeted: ‘I had nothing to do with this!!’ with the hashtag #mcfc, after City won the Premier League title on Sunday.