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SINGAPORE: An electric storm wreaks havoc on transmissions in Vienna, Austria. Thousands of kilometres away, television screens freeze on football fans in Singapore, in the middle of a nail-biting Euro 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey.
Yes, it was an unfortunate freak happenstance of nature. But, short of commanding the weather, could cable TV operator StarHub have done more so as not to leave fans stewing in the dark?
With some angry viewers asking that question, following the off-pitch drama of Thursday's early-morning match, the answer from StarHub is: Yes.
The operator has promised fans here that, for both Friday morning's semi-final between Russia and Spain as well as Sunday's big final, it would have ways to keep them updated of the unfolding action and score in case of any break in transmission.
This was not the case in Thursday's live telecast. The score was 1-1 in the second half, with giants Germany being outplayed by Turkey: Just before the hour-mark, television screens froze, leaving fans to stare at a still image of the game for four minutes.
The second interruption came with less than 15 minutes left in the game and StarHub carried the standard apology for the break in transmission. When the action resumed just before full time, the score stood at 2-2 - fans had missed a goal from Germany's Miroslav Klose and Turkey's equaliser four minutes from time by Semih Senturk.
They did catch Philipp Lahm's 90th minute strike for the Germans. But then, transmission was cut off again and an apology flashed. Fans were left to wonder if the Turks had once more staged a miraculous comeback as they had in injury time against Croatia.
It wasn't just Singapore viewers. All over the world, fans were cut off from the live feed by the storm in Vienna, where the international broadcast centre for Euro 2008 is located. Only Swiss channel SRG and middle eastern cable station Al Jazeera were unaffected; the former had direct access to a feed inside the stadium in Basel, Switzerland.
Calling the power cut at the broadcast centre "unfortunate", Mr Patrick Lim, StarHub head of cable TV services, said: "We fully understand and share the frustration of fans." As Uefa is the tournament's sole media rights owner, its broadcastfeed "was the only feed made available to us", he noted.
Yet, many were able to turn to live score websites and Internet feeds from other broadcasters that had contingency plans. For instance, across the Causeway, TV3 cut back to their studio where a presenter and his two guests did an impromptu analysis of what they saw of the second half, while providing viewers with score updates.
Broadcasters from Indonesia and Hong Kong, to as far away as South Africa, France and Italy, all did the same.
Media student Mohamed Sadat, 22, said: "We paid for the Season Pass, with Starhub promising value-adds like the tactical view of the pitch and key moment replays, but they couldn't even have the guests in the studio talking about the game during the disruption. In fact, they didn't even have a half-time studio show."
The pass, for sports group subscribers to catch all the Euro 2008 matches, cost S$20 without GST. Said Singapore viewer Ng Ghim Peng: "I hope StarHub can provide better live telecasts for the second semi-final (played Friday morning) and the Final on Sunday."
StarHub promised to do better.
Said Mr Lim, when contacted by TODAY: "We will explore alternative ways to relay the match progress to viewers, should transmission be disrupted in the middle of a key match."
In the event of a signal disruption in the second semi-final match, he said, "StarHub will update viewers with scores and key highlights on the pitch via on-screen crawler messages.
"In addition, StarHub will air a studio show during the final match, and presenters on the show will be able to keep viewers up-to-date with all the match highlights in the event of any transmission disruption."
Meanwhile, StarHub scheduled a total of four timeslots on Thursday for the repeat telecast of the Turkey-German game, including on its Preview Channel. - TODAY/fa
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