Audiences were surprised and forgiving following an embarrassing and rarely-seen 15-second technical error on China Central Television's (CCTV) flagship newscast, Xinwen Lianbo, Saturday.
The error occurred nine minutes into the program's regular half-hour 7 pm broadcast, which has been near flawlessly presented for decades.
The technical director mistakenly cut to anchorwoman Li Zimeng before a reporter's news report had finished. Li seemed taken aback by the quick end to the reporter's item but she started to read the next news item even while the audio of the previous news report could be heard.
The overlapping audio lasted about five seconds and it seemed to fluster Li, who mispronounced the Chinese word for Kazakhstan while reading the intro to a story about Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan's meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Two hours after the broadcast, an apology was posted on the official Sina Weibo account of CCTV News.
The network said the problem was caused by the newscast's director mistakenly giving the verbal order to cut to Li.
"We hereby apologize to our audience," the posting reads.
The posting had been reposted nearly 25,000 times by 9 pm Sunday, with many of the more than 14,500 comments calling for the staff involved to be treated with leniency. Many comforted the network saying that the audience does not care about a faux pas of this nature.
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