I tripped over this thread while doing a search on the Jack Cafferty hit and run (he’s being sued by a bicyclist). This is not a blooper but does anyone remember when Peter Jennings completely lost it doing a story on Snoop Doggy Dogg?
He couldn’t stop laughing, because the name struck him as hilarious. He usually has such a straight-laced demeanor, I had to laugh too when I heard about it. Wish I had seen it myself, though.
Q
Here in Charlotte we had a local weatheman who had a gimmick of doing the weather report outdoors. He stopped doing that when during his forecast some teenage kids came up and doused him with water balloons.
I didn’t actually see these myself, so they may be apochryphal. In the 50’s and 60’s the big thing with local TV stations was to have one of the big dogs at the station (weather man, lead announcer, whoever) be the host of an afternoon kiddie show where kids from some local school would come in in a group and be entertained by cartoons, a serial, some B Western, or what have you, as well as the local dude in a sailor suit or a cowboy outfit. Our local guy was Captain Bob and his little pardner Bobo the puppet.
One little kid was being interviewed by Captian Bob and was appearing restless so Bob asks the kid, “Why are you so nervous?” The kid says, “I need to tee-tee.” Bob says, “Okay. The rest room is right back there.” The kid says, “I need to tee-tee now.” And does. On camera.
Another kid is being asked if he wants to say hello to his mother on camera. So he says, “Hi, Mommie, this is for you.” (Kisses his palm and holds it up to the camera) “And this is for you, Herbie.” (Gives the camera the finger.)
Another kid is asked by the Captain, “What’s the worst thing you ever did in class?” The kid says, “I farted.”
What this thread is missing is some links.
So here’s one- The Streaker (Windows Media)
I remember an episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien from the mid-nineties. Max Weinberg had his drum set mounted on a large pedestal and there were a series of visual gags about it (a mountaineer climbing it and planting a flag, Max getting a nosebleed, an astronaut drifting by, and so forth.) At one point there’s the isolated sound of a bird chirping. Nervous, confused laughter from the audience. Conan says something like “A bird was supposed to come down on a wire and fly past Max.” One of the cameras gets a shot of a fake bird stuck at the end of a wire. They move on with the gags, then the bird starts moving. Conan says something like “Yes! Yes! Come on!” as it hurtles down. He finally jumps onto his desk pumping his fist saying “Yeah! All right! All right! We’ll be right back with…” well I forget who the next guest was.
This wasn’t live, actually, but it was fairly close.
Also, during the second episode of a 1950s BBC serial, an insect landed on a camera during the live broadcast, and was preseved on the kinoscope recording of the episode.
Fredricka Whitfield from CNN used the word “faggot” in place of “fashion” before an interview segment with the male editor of some European fashion periodicle. She corrected herself right away but it was during the introduction portion of the interview. I was surprised at how well she handled herself after the slip-up.
That sounds like a variation on this one:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=131061
Might very well be the same UL or whatever. As I said before, I didn’t actually witness these kiddie bloopers, but was pretty sure they happened locally from reports I had at roughly that same time. The fact that Captain Bob and Bobo were regulars, and that the kids coming in from various schools for the show were regular, and that Captain Bob and Bobo would talk with the kids on a regular basis, led me to accept the possibility that the stories were for real.
I figured that in the spirit of the OP the blooper was more what was of interest than whether we had actual videotape of the event. If they had to be verifiable events, you can scratch my contribution since I can’t personally validate them. I just thought they were funny.
On the Bob and Tom radio show, Chick was doing a sports story about NBA commissioner David Stern. He kept saying HOWARD intead of David.
Jon
I had the tv on one Sunday afternoon, and the Herbie movie went into reverse search. The cars drove backward, and IIRC, there were even the squiggle lines on the video. This went on for about five seconds, then the movie played forward from the point it had reached, repeating about 15 seconds’ worth.
Duuhhhh…it said TELEVISION bloopers.
Oh well, it was live anyway.
Jon
Many years ago , before computer graphics , the BBC weather presenters used magnetic letters on their weather maps. One night the presenter had trouble in making one of the letters stay on the map . At the end of the broadcast he said " sorry about the f in fog "