Sunday evening captioners were as stunned as many on the news of Saddam Hussein's capture by US Forces. None seemingly moreso than those handling the ticker at the Seven Network.
During the broadcast of The Legend of Bagger Vance news was filtering through on the find of the Ace of Spades. Late as it was, the name of Saddam Hussein shouldn't have been so foreign. Apparently having rather dimmer than usual spellers operating their news ticker, according to their streams, either a Saddam Hueisin or a Saqddam Hussien was captured.
As two throttling stations, Nine and Seven, handed over their audience to the CNN broadcast, their watermarks went into overdrive. Starting from rather small watermarks deep in the bottom right corners, both stations quickly moved on to opaque badges. An attempt to differentiate between the other station's live feed of the situation eventually led the Seven Network to ride the right with fist-sized badges. Attempts to make the news of others their own.
As the information was coming through, PM Howard learnt of the news from the streams, not from a phone call as was kindly given toward British PM Blair. Kindly cold and as unaware as anyone else.
Written on Monday, 15 December 2003