TV viewers robbed of semifinal drama

• by Soccer America , Jun 26, 2008

[EURO 2008] Only Swiss TV and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera broadcast the entire Germany win over Turkey from Switzerland while TV viewers around the world missed as much as 25 minutes of action, including the crucial second-half goals.

 

The interruption was blamed on a violent thunderstorm that knocked out power at the International Broadcast Center in Vienna.

UEFA said in a statement:

"Tonight the television signal in the International Broadcast Center for the Germany-Turkey game has been interrupted several times in the second half due to technical reasons which are currently being investigated, in particular to evaluate the impact of the violent electrical storm over Vienna at that time."

The FanFests in Germany were able to switch to the Swiss feed after a seven-minute interruption, but the commentary preceded the action by a few seconds, thus announcing Germany's second-half go-ahead goals a few seconds before the shots were taken.

In the USA, ESPN was unable to provide reports from the game as they cut to studio analysts during the outage.

ESPN Deportes will rebroadcast the game in its entirety on Saturday at noon ET.

Fans at the giant-screen public-viewing area in Vienna were evacuated in the midst of winds exceeding 60 mph.