diff --git a/youtube-dl b/youtube-dl
index 78fb07ea1..dc7ec136f 100755
--- a/youtube-dl
+++ b/youtube-dl
@@ -252,7 +252,10 @@ class IDParser(HTMLParser.HTMLParser):
 def get_element_by_id(id, html):
 	"""Return the content of the tag with the specified id in the passed HTML document"""
 	parser = IDParser(id)
-	parser.loads(html)
+	try:
+		parser.loads(html)
+	except HTMLParser.HTMLParseError:
+		pass
 	return parser.get_result()
 
 
diff --git a/youtube_dl/__init__.py b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
index 78fb07ea1..dc7ec136f 100755
--- a/youtube_dl/__init__.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
@@ -252,7 +252,10 @@ class IDParser(HTMLParser.HTMLParser):
 def get_element_by_id(id, html):
 	"""Return the content of the tag with the specified id in the passed HTML document"""
 	parser = IDParser(id)
-	parser.loads(html)
+	try:
+		parser.loads(html)
+	except HTMLParser.HTMLParseError:
+		pass
 	return parser.get_result()