The premature end of the ZDF ski jumping broadcast from the Nordic World Ski Championships on Saturday evening in Planica has upset the German Ski Association. “Our people took it as scandalous and very sad and angry. It doesn’t happen that often that three people have a chance of winning a medal – two made it. We all don’t understand that,” said team manager Horst Hüttel Sunday of the German Press Agency in Planica.
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 bit more than a bad situation,” said Hüttel. “We want to sell our sport well to the outside world. Then you want a mutual commitment, but that wasn’t the case in this case.”
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.
A Twitter user wrote of a “bad joke”, another said: “You can’t see anything with the second one.” In addition to ZDF, the special interest channel Eurosport also broadcast ski jumping live on television. ZDF was asked for a statement on Sunday.
