Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Technology's gotten too good

This happened long ago. They were doing some sort of gag on The Late Show with David Letterman. They had a cheerful child reporter on satellite. Dave asks him a question. The kid doesn't quite hear him and suddenly the picture is gone, it turns to static. Oh, we lost our satellite feed!

Then Dave jokes that it's amazing how, at the first problem with the interview, there's a sudden technical problem. Isn't that amazing.

They were sitting in the control room with their finger on the button ready to save the child from embarrassment.

Then the same thing happened on Rachel Maddow. She interviewed a gay cadet from West Point or some such place. The problem was that the guy immediately started talking like a West Point Cadet, shouting everything like a recruit in basic training. He didn't actually say "SIR, YES, SIR!" but he sounded like he might. But that only lasted a few seconds because the screen suddenly turned to static.

Maddow "joked" that she thought it was some conspiracy to silence him.

I think it's good that they spare people public humiliation by pulling the plug and pretending it's a technical glitch, but the problem is that it's too obvious. It's obvious because this is the only time it ever happens.

They need to have it happen now and then at an inopportune moment, in the middle of a big exclusive celebrity interview or during a celebrity trial, or something else celebrity-related.

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