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"This is not like the Swiss," TSN's Vic Rauter said after a series of power failures at Basel, Switzerland, denied viewers the pictures of two goals during the Germany-Turkey semi-final at Euro 2008 Wednesday.
The outages, in the second half, were caused by lightning hitting a transmission tower in Switzerland, a TSN spokesperson said. The lost feed affected the television feed world-wide. In the United States, ESPN lost its signal. So did the BBC in Britain.
The live picture went missing for a total of about 25 minutes.
Several minutes into the second half, the picture disappeared for about seven minutes. It returned and then disappeared again for another seven or eight minutes during which Germany scored a go-ahead goal and then Turkey tied it up.
Viewers were unable see those two goals, but they were able to watch the winning the goal late in the game before the screen went blank again.
TSN aired replays of the goals later.
The TSN spokesperson said the repeats of the game later tonight on Rogers Sportsnet and TSN would be clean feeds complete with the missed footage from the live telecast.
Rauter and analysts Dick Howard and Craig Forrest were clearly frustrated and perhaps a little irritated by the lost signal. Rauter noted the Swiss are famous for their efficiency.
"This is not like the Swiss, considering how good their chocolate is," he said.
At the conclusion of the telecast, Rauter apologized to the viewers.
