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A word from someone who has worked in the technical end of television for 31 years...

All TV stations/networks are now run by automation systems and sometimes those systems go absolutely stupid and start rolling stuff for no reason.

This sounds to me like one of the two scenarios...

1. The automation went haywire either through technical difficulties or being misprogramed by the operator. Most likely scenario, they forgot to put in a manual start for that break and when the countdown on the "dummy time" (they have to put in dummy times when generating automation runs for live shows in order to get the in and out times of the shows to jive with the official log) hit zero it rolled. In that situation the operator generally lets the first spot blow by and put a manual stop on the end-it is "less noticible" to the audience then dumping out of a commercial and then recovers the system to get it back on track.

2. They took down the automation to repair something and when they were going back to it the operator had the wrong line called up when he/she restarted the system.

3. The "Pepsi Syndrome"-The operator accidentally dropped something on the switcher or the "paddle" and it hit the initiate button. It is a very rare occurrence but it does happen.

As to the anchor "not noticing" that is an easy explanation. They do not route the on air feed into the studio, only the output of the production control room. They do not watch the commercials while in the breaks, they either are seeing black (nothing) or something on preview that they need to see (like a live feed of a fire or something).

In all of these events the person who is sitting in their BOC has to write the incident up and is more then likely gonna get his or her butt kicked on Tuesday.

Thank you for the heads up with that in depth information! I was sitting here this morning with conspiracy theories running through my head like you wouldn’t believe:
1) Who can retask a satellite?
2) If FNC won’t cave, who can infiltrate the company?
3) Are these commercial showings under control nationally, or locally?

...etc.

Thanks!