CNN’s Phillips victim of huge control room gaffe…
As noted earlier, CNN had a technical gaffe during President Bush’s speech observing the one year anniversary of hurrican Katrina. However, for those like myself who missed it, word is only now starting to circulate about just how big a gaffe this really was…
NewsBusters has the whole thing chronicled including some comments Kyra Phillips made about a sister in law and an obscenity that was uttered…
Phillips: “Yeah. He’s married, three kids, but his wife is just a control freak.”
[unidentified woman #2]: “Kyra.”
Phillips: “Yeah, baby?”
[unidentified woman #2]: “Your mike is on. Turn it off. It’s been on the air.”
First the obscenity, then ripping on FAMILY? Shame!!!!!
Comment by Terance — August 29, 2006 @ 3:26 pm
Poor Kyra! It’s funny, but she must feel like crap…if she even knows what’s going on since she’s still onair.
Comment by Jeremy — August 29, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Well, at least they weren’t trashing the President this time. That’s usually what you can expect from those “objective” folks at CNN.
Comment by spiffo — August 29, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
Hilarious! If you haven’t listened to the audio you should. Newsbuster.com has it. I would love to be a fly on the wall when she calls her brother to tell him about this one. lol
Comment by jerziegrl — August 29, 2006 @ 4:52 pm
President Bush and Tony Blair a month ago. I’m guessing most of us can relate, because it’s happened to most of us. But not on TV! Who hasn’t been in a building when a person forgets to turn off the PA after making an overhead announcement. I saw her earlier today and she seemed agitated; she came back from commercial and said something like “Okay, we’re now going to… okay, which one are we doing now… come on guys… okay… we’re going to tell you about the new developments with John Mark Karr and the JonBenet Ramsey case.”
Comment by erljr — August 29, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
CNN can’t even be trusted to even get the president’s speech on the air these days! They need a class in remedial TV for their employees. I guess the CNN president was too busy giving quotes to the press to realize an anchor’s conversation from the damn toilet was on the air.
Comment by Harvey — August 29, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
I bet Thanksgiving with the sister-in-law will be oodles of fun this year.
This is so totally wrong, yet it’s still funny. I guess the longer you’re on the air, the more likely a snafu becomes.
Comment by Caroline — August 29, 2006 @ 5:29 pm
Poor anchorette #4, whatever her name is, but the real frightening thing is that IT WENT ON FOR SO LONG!!!!!!
Another proud day at CNN.
Comment by Chris — August 29, 2006 @ 5:57 pm
Chris, I agree–before I watched it I figured it had to be a quick thing but holy cow, why did it take so long for someone to let her know??
Comment by OverHere — August 29, 2006 @ 6:03 pm
Who cares what should have been done…some of the people on this board need to loosen up. I bet the average viewer got their daily laugh out of this one.
Comment by anonymous — August 29, 2006 @ 6:16 pm
Ummm, who said it wasn’t funny? But it’s a HUGE screw-up regardless of the humorous side of it.
Comment by OverHere — August 29, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
It would have been funnier (and better) if she WERE trashing the president!
Comment by tanne — August 29, 2006 @ 7:21 pm
When we goof up - and we all have - at least just a small circle of friends or neighbors know about it.
But in front of the whole television audience - Yikes!
Maybe the fear of repeating Kyra’s mistake will stop some of the strutting and preening of some other anchors.
Ya’ think?
Comment by cella — August 29, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
naahhhhh!
I bet her husband is flattered.
I bet her sister-in-law watches FNC or MSNBC.
Olbermann will probably run it three or four times!
Comment by erljr — August 29, 2006 @ 9:11 pm
They ran it on Countdown ONCE tonight (and he’s not back from vacation yet).
Oh my, how embarrassing.
Rule of thumb: treat all mikes as live, and don’t wear one to the bathroom!
Actually, this sort of reminded me of these idiotic women who take cell phones into the bathroom with them and make calls from the stall. Not only is it rude to hog a stall that way when someone needs it for its intended purpose (it’s a bathroom stall, ladies, not a PHONE BOOTH!), but they should be more considerate of the person they’re calling AND the other women in the room. Maybe the person they’re calling doesn’t want to hear flushing toilets and who knows what other noises in the background…and maybe the other women in the bathroom don’t want THEIR noises broadcast to whoever the person is calling!
In short: this is an embarrassing situation, but it could have been even more embarrassing…and so could the conversational topic! They’re lucky it wasn’t worse!
Comment by tanne — August 29, 2006 @ 9:44 pm
Oh, and one positive thing about all this: Kyra’s husband now knows exactly what she says about him to other women behind his back…and apparently, she thinks he’s a saint!
Comment by tanne — August 29, 2006 @ 9:46 pm
It’s not that someone didn’t tell Kyra - it’s that with the CNN control room, management, newsroom and dozens of others less than a 90-second run away - no one screamed at audio or master control to kill the mike.
CNN’s air should be on in every suite, engineering shop, lobby, make-up room and atrium in the complex.
Comment by steve — August 29, 2006 @ 10:35 pm
After that goof-up, is Kyra ready to receive that pink slip?
Granted most viewers were glued on to Fox, but this was rather embarrassing and inexcusable. It may have been a mistake, but it’s the kind that can kill a career. Let’s see what CNN does.
Comment by RGL — August 30, 2006 @ 2:53 am
“It’s not that someone didn’t tell Kyra - it’s that with the CNN control room, management, newsroom and dozens of others less than a 90-second run away - no one screamed at audio or master control to kill the mike.”
I agree 100% steve, I didn’t realize where she was at the time I commented above.
Comment by OverHere — August 30, 2006 @ 9:11 am
RGL, other than thinking she was clear to speak (I was trained to always figure the mic is live), I can hardly see why Kyra should be canned over this incident. Where were the sound guys? What do they do in the CNN control room these day? Sit around playing Sudoku?
Comment by F10 — August 30, 2006 @ 9:16 am
“What do they do in the CNN control room these day? Sit around playing Sudoku?”
That’s a very good question. I’ve seen some of the weirdest misspellings on some of their graphics, too. College interns? Because it seems to me that no one under thirty knows how to spell any more.
Comment by Arthur — August 30, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
“Rule of thumb: treat all mikes as live, and don’t wear one to the bathroom!”
Yeah, but that kind of leaves you unable to go to the bathroom for hours and hours. Getting those wires on and off isn’t a matter of a few seconds; they have wires running all over the place.
Comment by Arthur — August 30, 2006 @ 1:33 pm
…there’s a direct OFF switch on those wireless microphone packs — no need to rely totally on the control-room techs..
Comment by berens — August 30, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
but CNN raves about it’s HUGE staff giving it so much better coverage of everything. These things aren’t supposed to happen at CNN, but they do. Lots of people should be able to cut someone’s mike off. They’ve shown us their foreign desk where multiple people watch all the other news channels all over the world. But they don’t have anyone watching their own channel? Maybe their people were watching the President on FNC.
Comment by erljr — August 30, 2006 @ 8:58 pm