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What TV event, live or recorded, scripted or not, was the most disasterous? Why was it so? How did the public react? Are there any short or long term effects on society?
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Probably East Germany’s accidental (and at that time false) televised announcement that any citizen can get an instant exit visa immediately. 4 hours later the wall fell.
The only TV broadcast that literally destoryed a country
How about the Vote Leave commercials during the UK Brexit campaign?
As much as that has fucked up the UK, the UK does still exist. East Germany got annexed within two years.
11 months 😉
Give it time. Scottish independence. Reunification of Ireland. Maybe.
It was not annexed.
They joined the Bundesrepublik.
I‘m sure this should be the top comment. Now this was a disastrous (for the rulers of the GDR) broadcast which actually changed history.
Yeah, this is exactly the kinda thing I wanted to see.
"Sofort, unverzüglich"
I also thought of this one as the most influential one.
I've never heard of this wow, is there a Wiki article or something where I could read more about it? I've searched on google but couldn't find anything
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall
Scroll down to „Misinformed public announcements“
I think they have made two or three movies about this, mainly for German television
Oh yeah, I did know of that one, but that's a good one.
Maybe"kur** przepraszam "?
In some morning broadcast, they imvited magician to show trick with some blade under a cup. We'll, trick didn't work....
" Oh fuck, I'm sorry" become a meme after that situation
https://youtu.be/wXZKGHUh9vk?si=I580ujGmEBbK8Ilz
I was thinking about this guy driving scooter into audience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fRo-wCaSfc
Conrado 🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸
State TV's flagship evening newscast with the team being severly hungover after New Years' Eve 1993/1994 is a close second.
And you may ad that Mr Gugała after that became an ambasador in some Latin American country, I don't remember - urugway maybe?
Uruguay yes, but few years later. It was kind of justified, as he was a Hispanic studies MA and fluent in language.
I guess nobody remembers Durczok's dirty table anymore
Except it wasn't broadcast but leaked online
I remember that. It was a long time ago, no? Like 2010 ish?
Yeah, I think it was around 2014
That’s not a long time ago.
They should really stop doing this one, we had a similiar one ( at least he had the decency to do it himself)
A co o ''upier*****ym stole'' Durczoka?
So King's Day (back then Queen's Day) is on my mind because that was just yesterday, but I imagine it was the live broadcast of the royal family's parade in Apeldoorn back in 2009, when some guy decided to drive through the crowd and splatter himself on a monument in an attempt to hit the bus carrying the royals.
8 people, including the guy who did it, died.
This was horrible indeed. One of the people that died was my next door neighbour growing up. One of his daughters is my age. It must’ve been horrifying for them. You can actually see him flying through the air on that footage. Imagine seeing your father like that.
The king and queen visited the relatives of the people who died.
The next few Queens day celebrations had a whole different feeling to them. Also more security obviously.
The live hostage situation of the National News team during a live broadcast (2015) was also pretty bad.
Though the outcome of that one wasn't all too bad in the end.
The announcement of the death of prime minister Antall József in 1993 caused trauma to many children. It wasn't because they cared about the prime minister but it cut a Duck Tales episode at a quite exciting part and then it took years for them to be able to see that episode again. Poor kids.
Kind of related, in Poland in 1981 they didn't play morning kids TV program Teleranek and instead broadcasted the announcement of the start of the martial law. They also stopped Teleranek completely for a few first months of the martial law. A fragment of the announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuN_n4CdR3w
That's barbaric.
“Zamiast Teleranka, były mordy i łapanka”.
(Instead of Teleranek, there were murders and roundups)
Interrupting Duck Tales!! The absolute savagery!! I guess the 90s were a different time! Kids basically had no human rights!!
It even has an article on the Hungarian Wikipedia with the title "The interruption of DuckTales".
Somehow this makes me appreciate you Hungarians even more. That this is part of the collective psyche and warrants it's entry into Wikipedia. Amazing
Not really 'disastrous' but was pretty funny in a dark, twisted sense...
In the UK, there's a tradition of some channels putting 'filler programming' around the 8:30 mark on weekdays, usually with some sort of food-based theme.
One evening in 2023, without any prior explanation, Channel 4 (who are known for usually putting controversial programming on) aired this - a 'documentary' about cheaply-produced lab-grown meat, featuring the hosts of these filler programmes where it's slowly revealed thatthe meat is sourced from human flesh, with the most expensive coming from dead children and infants. It caused such a stir in the the country that Parliament even condemned it!
Some of the YouTube comments are... odd
Yeah, feels like all of them are like my conspiracy minded uncle.
Such a good combination of funny and incredibly off-putting.
I feel like it would do way better as an online Netflix sort of thing, kinda like that first episode of Black Mirror
Yeah I remember watching that, one of the bizzarest things I've ever seen. It started out like a normal documentary, then got stranger and stranger and stranger, then I finally clocked on to it. But yeah, was bizzare.
Me too, I felt queasy initially, but it got to the point when they said it was cleared for consumption and I fell in. Very well done. Should of saved it for april first along with the 1951 spaghetti grows in trees.
Maybe Samuel Koch at Wetten, Dass...?, a live TV show about bets.
He betted that he could jump over moving cars. He succeeded once, then the car that was steered by his father hit him and crushed his spine.
Wetten, Dass was one of the biggest German TV shows, so this was a bit unfortunate.
This also came to my mind immediately.
And then the hostage situation of Gladbeck where the journalists lost every sense of moral and interviewed the hostage takers while they were pointing a gun to the hostage's head. All televised live. Crazy shit.
This photo, it's kinda staged, as he was asked by the journalists to pose for the camera in certain ways, there are many photos around, both from the bus first, then the interviews and finally the car.
And then, you get the parody of course.
Nothing is holy and sacred enough to not get a parody i guess. I saw the disc in store and i was like "wait... i know this photo from somewhere?"
Imagine being a hostage, scared for your life, and then there's a journalist asking your hostage-taker to point a gun on your neck for a sensationalist photo that will sell lots of papers.
Yeah, it led to a big change in the presse kodex, how the media should cover such cases and to stay away from ongoing crime scenes.
But when the police stopped the car and opened fire, that was after the press incident. They fucked it all up, when you read the sources.
As someone who grew up in a war zone and spent a lot of time learning about the journalists who covered the war you'll be surprised to find out that a huge percentage of war/crisis footage is always staged.
Concerning hostages - if I recall correctly attempts at liberating the Israeli hostages at the 1972 Olympics in Munich were also thwarted by live reporting the police's said attempts at creeping up to and storming the flat where the captives were held.
Yikes, I forgot about that. Yeah, I change my answer.
Surely Günter Schabowski and his mistake regarding the wall?
I thought about that but in the end, I wouldn't call the end of an authoritarian regime a disaster, regardless of how big of an impact the mistake really had on the timeline.
But it was a disaster for the ones making the broadcast, and that's the sorta stuff I wanted.
He definitely was the first thing that came to my mind!
The UK version was broadcast in the early 90s called "You Bet!"
Yep, one of the only times UK TV copied a German original TV show (it ran here from 1981 until 2014 and since 2021) and not the other way around.
It was also adapted on Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Polish, Russian, US and Greek TV programmes.
Yes I think the UK presenters Ant and Dec presented a revival on US television
TIL!
I always thought it was something we'd come up with - I recently had to explain the concept of the show to some younger colleagues and they looked at me with a mix of confusion and pity, as if that was the best TV we had in the 90s, lol.
The co-hostess Michelle Hunziker eventually overcame the shock and hosted the Italian version of this show in 2018
From the government's perspective it was the press conference that took down the wall.
From the media's perspective: The Gladbeck hostage crisis, where the media lost every distance and interviewed the hostage takers, while one of them held a gun in Silke Bischoff's face. This became an iconic photo for the failure of the media. Here is another press photo from inside the car
And here is a screenshot from the TV drama about the same situation
Fucking vultures. Devoid of empathy and humanity, the lot of them.
And it was after they already shot one hostage (15yo boy) day before. Next day, Bischoff was also killed during the final gunfight with police.
Edit: TIL this is an urban legend.
Telecupón (tele lotto). The TV host was a 70-something woman who was famous because she was a little bit goofy (she died last year with dementia/Alzheimer). A girl calls and win a surprise present:
It's a bike!
Can you give me another thing?
Why?
I'm paraplegic.
What a lovely profession!
On that note we have "er det en abe?" (is it a monkey) when the female host of the morning show on Danish TV2 is shown a picture of a black man on a boat... She immediately back pedals though when she realizes it's a man! As I recall it, it didn't have many consequences for her personally except for being made fun of for a while.
It is a well-known story, but I'm fairly certain that never actually happened.
It seems you are right:
https://www.telecinco.es/outdoor/bulos-leyendas-television_18_2389800077.html
Ay Carmen Sevilla
Was that Carmen Sevilla?
Not sure if disastrous in that sense, but extremely controversial at the time: On boxing day in 1966 Swedish actor Per Oscarsson made a stunt on prime time national television on the evening family program "Hylands Hörna", where he held a completely improvised monologue where he talked about immigration, the holocaust, that black people don't smell worse or are less intelligent than white people, and explained the act of having sex to children. During the latter monologue he proceeded with undressing himself leaving just his underpants, after which he walked out of the studio, leaving even the main presenter confused about what was going on. The stunt was completely improvised and was not a part of the manuscript.
The coup sparked a lot of national controversy and debate, and is said to be Sweden's first television scandal. I have tried to find the entire video on Youtube, but I can't find more than a few clips. Some of them can be seen in this video, from 21:00 until 23:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usMef5Ov0UI
This one is also a live TV classic.
There was also a clip from that show where the word of the day was sitta but the man guessed fitta 🤣🤣🤣
I know it, but I don't think I should say it...
From Sweden, it's not 'disastrous' but I always remember this subtitle mixup!
This is the laugh I didn’t know I needed today
The Sex Pistols interview on the Bill Grundy show in 1976. The interview effectively destroyed Grundy's career.
And Judy’s dress falling off when Richard and Judy were receiving an award at the National Television Awards.
You forgot the 1989 Brit Awards with Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood.
The Music industry’s biggest night of the year and it all went wrong on live TV.
Apparently the rehearsals went perfectly, but the live event had a different running order (why?!), so they would say “here’s the Bee Gees” but Boy George would walk out on stage, for example.
And Jarvis Cocker mooning Michael Jackson's performance at the 1996 BRIT awards