No more Euro blackouts: UEFA

Tag : Power Switch


Wednesday's game was in Basel, Switzerland but Vienna'sInternational Broadcast Centre, from where the universal televisionfeed is relayed to broadcasters, lost power after being hit by aviolent thunderstorm and the system failed to automatically changeto a backup supply.
As a result, television pictures were lost for two separatesix-minute spells. When UEFA tried to take the system down andswitch to the backup power supply, the feed was lost for anothersix minutes.
Only Swiss TV was able to show the entire game, as it was using aseparate fibre-optic feed from the Basel Stadium, as opposed to theworld broadcast feed.
Canadian viewers watching on TSN saw their TV screens go blankseveral times and ended up missing Germany's go-ahead goal in the79th minute and Turkey's equalizer in the 86th minute.
The feed was restored in time for Canadian viewers to watch PhilippLahm's winning goal for Germany in the final minute of regulationtime.
Alexandre Fourtoy, head of UEFA's media technology department, saidUEFA and the system provider assured there would be no blackoutsfor Thursday's semifinal between Russia and Spain, or Sunday'sfinal, both in Vienna.
"Yesterday [Wednesday], because of the massive storm in Vienna,there were three minor power cuts, each less than a millisecond,which caused the master control room to reboot, which can takearound five minutes," he told reporters.
"The system was defective in detecting the cuts and switching tobackup power, but we have changed this to ensure continuity of thesignal for the remaining games."
"This is not normal summer weather for central Europe. It wasexceptional and there is no forecast of a repeat," added WilliamGaillard, UEFA's director of communications.