Five years to the day after Janet Jackson‘s wardrobe malfunction sparked national outrage, a more explicit display has caused a major furor on a much smaller scale.
In a bizarre situation, Super Bowl viewers in Tucson, Arizona went from celebrating a Larry Fitzgerald touchdown to likely scrambling for the remote. Right after Fitzgerald scored a touchdown that looked as if it would end up being the game winner for the Cardinals, “the Super Bowl feed paused and dissolved into” a scene from an adult channel.
The scene played for a whopping 30 seconds, and featured male nudity.
While Tucson NBC affiliate KVOA recieved “a flurry of angry phone calls and e-mails“, the error is actually the fault of Comcast, which says it is “mortified” and “investigating the situation including the possibility of foul play.”
In another case, of techinical difficulties, NBC lost its audio during an inopportune time during its pre-game show.
In the middle of Matt Lauer‘s interview with President Barack Obama during the NBC’s Super Bowl Pre-Game Show, Obama’s audio went out for approximately fourteen seconds. During the fourteen seconds wihtout audio, NBC NFL studio host Bob Costas “could be heard asking, ‘Did you lose it?’“
While the audio returned, the rest of the interview did not go off seamlessly. The audio during the remainder of the interview “wasn’t as clear” as it had been before, and “at one point, the two-shot on Lauer and Obama froze.”
