BBC has issued an on-air apology to Manchester United fans. The BBC ran a ticker message that stated, ‘Manchester United are rubbish’. The incident occurred on Tuesday during one live telecast. Quickly the news broadcasters realized and regretted their mistake.
The statement appeared because of the error of a trainee who was looking to understand how to use the ticker, according to BBC presenter Annita McVeigh. McVeigh further said that the message was not to appear on the screen. United is among the most successful football clubs in England. They had a mediocre season in the recently finished 2021-22 season, finishing outside of the Premier League‘s top four. The images of the BBC’s error during a live show quickly went online, eliciting furious responses from some United supporters.
Technical Glitch
McVeigh said, “just while we are on the subject of football, a little earlier some of you may have noticed something pretty unusual on the ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen with the news. Making a comment about Manchester United and I hope Manchester United fans weren’t offended by it.”
Explaining the error, she added, “let me just explain what was happening. Behind the scenes, someone was training to learn how to use the ticker. And to put text on the ticker so they were just writing random things. That comment appeared, so apologies if you saw that and we offended and you’re a fan of Manchester United. But certainly, that was a mistake. And it wasn’t meant to appear on the screen.”
Following the ticker blunder, the BBC issued an official statement claiming that there was a technical glitch during practice with the testing ticker, which unintentionally went live during the broadcast.
“There was a technical glitch during training with our test ticker, which rolled over to live programming for a few seconds. We apologize for any offense caused on air,” said BBC.