Sunday 7 September 2008

I Wonder Who Won???

There was supposed to be racing of some sort on Ireland's second national TV channel yesterday afternoon, but the recent monsoons put paid to that.

Instead, some genius at RTE decided to show the 1965 classic 'The Great Race' instead, to be followed at 4:30pm by International Football (Ireland Vs Georgia).

Simple enough, you say?

Yes indeed; until one considers that the movie started at about 2:15pm and has a run time of approximately 160 minutes.

Surprisingly, no-one at RTE seems to have noticed this until about 4:25, with about 40 minutes of movie left and sports coverage due to start in 5.

And sure enough, the movie was pre-empted by a continuity announcer saying '...and there we have to leave The Great Race for the time being, because now it's time for...' etc., as she introduced the football.

The announcement gave the impression that RTE might return to the movie after the match, but the post-match schedule was already pretty full, so I don't think that happened.

The irony is that The Great Race has a built-in intermission anyway, which RTE could have taken advantage of, had they given the matter any thought.

Push the button, Max...

2 comments:

Arjan said...

strange thing is..I read this one a while ago..but the internet was against me and didn't allow me to comment..or stay online for a long enough time to do anything right..

Stupid networks..they mess up stuff here too sometimes.

Captain Incredible said...

Arjan - I know, it's always the way; but RTE haven't done anything like that since the late Seventies...

They used to run a movie, cut to a commercial, then resume, and the movie would have run during the break so you'd miss three to five minutes.

Now they just drop the credits at the end, sometimes intruding on the final scene...

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