How an old broadcast glitch involving "Teletubbies" and "The Sopranos" captivated the internet of 2026

The enigma of “Teletubbies” with subtitles from “The Sopranos” — it is either history’s most epic broadcast blunder or a brazen fabrication. A tale comprising illicit captions, a defunct network, vanished archives, and sudden virality 14 years later. An insane error or a brilliant hoax? We examine the facts.

In late January 2026, reports began circulating across social media platforms (X, Bluesky, Threads) regarding an incident from way back in 2012: due to a technical malfunction during an episode of the children’s show “Teletubbies” an Icelandic television station broadcast subtitles intended for the drama series “The Sopranos”. Sometimes the internet requires 14 years to truly appreciate a blunder of such epic proportions. Here is the decoding of his complete and strange story.

Timeline of Events

On October 25, 2012, user Svanhildur Hólm Valsdóttir posted on Facebook photographs showing a television set airing “Teletubbies”; the subtitles, however, did not correspond to the on-screen action and were decidedly unsuitable for a children’s program.

Subsequently, local media outlets took note of the story, identifying the broadcast as originating from the Icelandic channel Stöð 2.

In 2019, the incident was covered by outlets including the BBC, which noted that the station had not commented on the matter.

In early 2026, the story was given a new lease on life. User ‪Atla Hrafney posted the original images on Bluesky, but this time with an AI-generated translation of the subtitles from Icelandic into English. This allowed a broader audience to appreciate the absurdity of the situation, and the story went viral.

Seeking further evidence: where is the broadcast recording?

Having achieved widespread notoriety on social media, the tale of the broadcast error immediately came under the scrutiny of skeptics. Some questioned why the circulating screenshots appeared in English — a query we have addressed above.

Others raised a different point: if the glitch was real, where is the footage?

Unfortunately, the chances of locating the original recording in the channel’s archives are effectively zero. On June 12, 2012, Stöð 2 ceased operations and was fully replaced by the channel Sýn. The archives of the old brand, including any potential recording of that broadcast, proved inaccessible or lost.

A search via the Web Archive yielded no results either: the channel’s legacy website hosted no public video records, only paid content. It is highly probable that this recording simply does not exist in digital format.

This conclusion was partially corroborated by the author of the original 2012 photographs. Svanhildur Hólm Valsdóttir in an interview with GFCN confirmed that she personally witnessed the display of the erroneous subtitles on air and snapped the photos, though she did not record video of the event.