Before the decision at the Ski Jumping World Championships, ZDF switches to the news
Andreas Wellinger flies to World Cup silver and the ZDF viewers don’t get it
Source: dpa/Daniel Karmann
Andreas Wellinger and Karl Geiger jump to silver and bronze at the Ski Jumping World Championships. But the ZDF viewers look in the tube during the decisive phase of the competition because the broadcaster interrupts the transmission. The reaction of the German Ski Association is unmistakable.
Dhe early end of the ZDF ski jumping broadcast of the Nordic World Ski Championships on Saturday evening in Planica, Slovenia, annoyed the German Ski Association. “This has been taken by our people as scandalous and very sad and angry. It doesn’t happen that often that three people have chances for the medals – two made it. None of us understand that,” said team manager Horst Hüttel.
The fact that the public broadcaster stopped the TV broadcast shortly before the medal decision in the individual on Saturday and switched to the “heute” news at 7 p.m. also caused displeasure among some fans on social media. The last jumpers could still be seen in the broadcaster’s live stream on the Internet.
“It’s definitely a more than uncomfortable situation to some extent,” said Hüttel. “We want to sell our sport well to the outside world. Then you also want a mutual commitment, but that wasn’t the case in this case.”
The competition was broadcast on the ZDF stream
The program collision came about because there were repeated delays in World Ski Jumping Championships due to the weather. By switching to the “heute” program, according to AGF video research, an average of 3.185 million people interested in ski jumping (market share: 19.4 percent) were no longer able to follow the last participants from the normal hill live on ZDF television. They thus missed the leaps from Andreas Wellinger to World Championship silver and from Karl Geiger to World Championship bronze. The winner was Piotr Zyla from Poland.
Wellinger (right) and Karl Geiger celebrate their medal jumps in Planica
Which: Getty Images/Jurij Kodrun
The two medals felt like a world title for the German team. “It was almost like a world champion how we did it. It’s really cool to be the head coach of this squad that’s working behind the scenes. And, of course, also being the coach of athletes who are constantly involved,” said national ski jumping coach Stefan Horngacher.
The ZDF viewers did not notice the leaps to bronze and silver. A Twitter user wrote of a “bad joke”, another said: “You can’t see anything with the second.” In addition to ZDF, Eurosport also broadcast ski jumping live on television. Until the end.
