Italian Doraemon Incident

The Italian Doraemon Incident was an unintentional broadcast that occurred on the 11th of April 2016.
== Perpetrators ==
ABS Televisione Giappone S.p.A. is a division of Kabushiki Gaisha ABS operated in tandem with Italian broadcasting company Mediaset.
Founded on the 10th of April 2016, the station broadcasts localized Japanese programming with Italian and English subtitles, Doraemon being an exception to this with Mediaset having produced its own dub. The same show also carries English subtitles.
== Lead-up to incident ==
thumb|298x298px|The full opening as seen on MediaSet's Boing children's channel.
ABS Televisione Italia commenced operations at 12:00 CET on the 10th of April 2016. Kabushiki Gaisha ABS, however, did not realize that their international satellite feed was left under the control of their newly-formed Italian affiliate.
Doraemon broadcasts were drawn from the feed for TV Asahi's All-Nippon News Network affiliates, which also unofficially forms a network of stations operating under the affiliation and supervision of TV Asahi Corporation.
An ABS engineer in Lucca (ABS Televisione Italia's headquarter city) however noticed that what he described as the "wrong opening sequence" (which was actually the correct standard Doraemon opening used for ABS' international broadcasts) was to precede the episode "Takeshi's Bum-ba-dum Birthday", which was scheduled to air as a rerun on TV Asahi and ABS International at 5:00 pm JST, whilst another episode (which was dubbed in Italian) was scheduled to run at the exact same time (5:00 pm JST = 9:00 am CET) on ABS Televisione Italia.
The engineer attempted to "fix" the "discrepancy" by placing the Italian Doraemon opening in the place of the Japanese OP. However, he was unaware that he was actually altering ABS' International feed and TV Asahi's own domestic Japanese feed.
== Incident ==
At 5:00 pm JST, the show officially began, the original opening running for a mere 4 seconds before cutting to a completely black screen for two seconds (the TV Asahi logo disappearing approximately 1 second into this blank slide before reappearing a second later) before fading into the Italian opening. TV Asahi's logo was still present throughout the opening. Other engineers in Japan failed to notice the fault as they were "too busy yelling down the phone demanding to know what was happening".
One minute and 20 seconds later, the episode began as normal, however with the title card and opening sequence omitted after being overridden by the Italian OP.
Immediately at the same time, tweets began appearing accusing ABS of a "shocking, unexpected change" to the opening sequence. Kabushiki Gaisha ABS declined to comment, as they too were unaware of the incident, despite being the parent of ABS Televisione Giappone, who was responsible for the incident. Media began dubbing the event as the "Italian Doraemon Incident". Some of the tweets and e-mails were forwarded from TV Asahi Corporation and its affiliated networks, suggesting that other ANN channels were affected as well.
== Aftermath ==
Kabushiki Gaisha ABS, after analyzing the broadcast, concluded that the opening song was indeed the one intended for use in Italy, leading to the subsequent summoning of ABS Televisione Giappone. At the same time, a map showing the areas affected by the incident was placed on ABS' Doraemon website (doraemon.abs.jp) to show which parts of Japan had reported incidences of the intrusion.
ABS Televisione Italia issued a memo to all broadcast engineers stating that it would surrender all control of ABS' international satellite transponders whilst it took sanctions against the individual responsible, and measures to prevent the incident from being repeated on such a scale.
TV Asahi Corporation received notices from at least 20 of its television channels who confirmed that they were affected by the Italian Doraemon Incident.
Mediaset, the Italian production company responsible for the Italian Doraemon dub, commented on the incident calling it an "unfortunate, albeit inevitable, mistake made by yet another upstart station".
ABS N6 (which aired an hour after the botched Doraemon broadcast) soon made this opening statement;
"Good evening, this is ABS N6. Breaking news from the Italian city of Lucca at the moment: One of our newest sister stations, ABS Television [sic] Italia has never managed to get past the 24-hours-since-launch mark without a technical mishap of extraordinary proportions; an incident that has affected many TV stations across Europe and Japan, including the ABS Television Network. With puzzled viewers sending in tweets and e-mails inquiring about a quote-on-quote "change" to Doraemon's opening sequence that was actually the unintended consequence of an Italian engineer tampering unknowingly with satellite feeds, TV Asahi Corporation continues to forward on e-mails sent to their affiliates, sparking belief that their national network was affected as well. Our reporter from Lucca has more on the story..."
One day after the incident, the company renamed itself as "ABS Televisione Giappone", an Italian translation of "ABS Television Japan". The reason for this change was unknown, but some people believe that it may have been done to shake off their negative image cast upon them by the Italian Doraemon Incident.
Category:Doraemon
Category:Aso Broadcasting System
Category:Italy
Category:Television Stations in Japan
Category:Television incidents