Schedulers forced to scramble as no adverts air for two hours from 8pm
Channel 4’s primetime schedule was disrupted by severe playout issues yesterday, with no adverts running for almost two hours.
The issue, related to a technical problem with its playout provider Red Bee Media, meant its schedule ran ahead of time and forced C4 to air a 15-minute segment from Kirstie’s Vintage Home in order to get back on track.
The problems began shortly after 8pm during the launch episode of Kirstie and Phil’s Love It or List It: Brilliant Builds which played out in standard definition instead of HD and without any ad breaks.
As a result of the lack of adverts, the show only occupied around 49-minutes in the schedule and meant Grand Designs was brought forward from its 9pm slot.
Amid concerns that the second series launch of This Way Up would also be affected, C4 sent a tweet at 9.47pm alerting viewers that the show had already begun.
However this was not the case and schedulers had dropped a segment from Kirstie’s Vintage Home into the schedule to ensure This Way Up started at 10pm as originally planned.
By this time, the problem had been resolved and the Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan sitcom aired with adverts across its full 30-minute slot.
The All 4 live stream, which mirrors C4’s schedule, was also affected by the technical difficulties.
A C4 spokeswoman said: “Due to a technical issue with our transmission playout provider, some viewers may have experienced some disruption to their programming.”
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