Holy Cow! I remember seeing this too. Forgot all about it and would have never remembered if you didn’t mention it. Forgot all about CPO Sharkey as well 
I was watching live coverage in a conference room at work and one of the things that stuck out for me was when the second tower fell. Aaron Brown on CNN was speechless. There was just silence as the building came down and he eventually said something like “what can anybody say?”
I was working a corporate show. Needless to say, I never got the chance to speak.
I remember seeing the Howard Cosell “little monkey” comment live. The player (can’t remember who now) was having a hell of a game and was running with absolutly no concern for his safety. It was quite obvious to anyone with a brain that Howard didn’t mean anything racial about it. Especially given his record during the civil rights movement.
I wonder if anyone else remembers this other Cosell moment. On some broadcast during my youth a fan in the stands found a live microphone, probably one of the ones they use for crowd noise. This fan starts yelling rude things at Howard over a pretty long period of time. IIRC he never said anything that needed to be bleeped but it was embarrasing. For some reason they couldn’t isolate that mic and eliminate it. Cosell made things worse by saying something like, “I think I know that guy.” It was obvious to anyone listening that it was some random drunk asshole in the stands.
In the excellent book about the American Basketball Assocation - “Loose Balls”. Bob Costas, who was a play-by-play announcer for the St. Louis Spirits at the time, recalled the opening line he used in interviewing the St. Louis coach the day after the team lost a game to the Kentucky Colonels after having a big lead earlier in the game…
“Well coach, how about that blow job in Kentucky last night?”
Every time I see Costas on TV, can’t help but laugh.
If that’s who I was watching, he said, after the long pause you mentioned, “…There are no words.”
I think it was Bobby Clarke, as a player in one of the Canada-Red Army games: this was in the 70’s and they were starting to put more cameras and microphones in the broadcasts. They trained the camera on the bench, turned the mike on, and commented: “There’s Bobby Clarke, he always has something to say that will urge his team on!”. With perfect timing, Clarke let’s loose at Bruce Hood, the ref: “Why don’t you go fuck yourself Hood you fucking queer!”
The funny thing is, Bobby Clarke probably still would have said the same thing had he known he was being mic’ed.
i can remember watching the challenger blow up live; i was in elementary school, and we had had a live video hookup to the launch (i think it was grade three.) i do remember that regular classes were cancelled for the rest of the day, and we had long discussions about the the dangers & risks & benefits of science with teachers and previously unknown councilors for the rest of that day.
and also i remember being called inside by my mom from playing ball hockey in the street, to sit & watch on the cbc - if not the actualities - at least the replays of both tiananmen square & the fall of the berlin wall. (i think, but without doing math am unsure, that these were during grades 5 & 6 )
and i can remember being in my late highschool (i think grade 13) up late at night watching t.v. when the news of princess diana dying broke. i woke my mom up to tell her the news, and she was like “meh. i gotta work tomorrow. if you wake me up this time again, it had better be for something impotant!”
also on 9/11/01, i was awakened by a guy who lived a couple rooms away in residence pounding loudly on my door. he told me that the wtc & pentagon had been attacked, and i was in a slightly hungover daze, but i became very sobered as i was led into a neighbour’s room just in time to see the first world trade centre tower collapse (i’m pretty sure it was live, though at least on one of, if not the, first replays of the tragedy shown on t.v.)
Back in the 70’s they experimented a bit with miking the players’ benches. I remember one game where Bobby Clarke (captain of the Flyers at the time, now their GM) was berating the referee: “You bastard, Hood! YOU FUCKIN QUEER!”
They could get away with that in those days 
Unless it slipped in without me noticing, we’re sorely lacking one famous moment:
“Up the Butt, Bob”. :eek:
I was in first period in high school when one shop teacher came over and told our shop teacher on the way to the coffee pot that the shuttle had exploded. We didn’t believe him. This would make it between 8 and 9 am, I would think.
Not true. I was watching ABC (Channel 6 Action News for those in Philly) news with my mother and saw the only live shot that was aired.
(previous post was referring to the Bud Dwyer suicide)
Who can forget the “Mr Higgins” call during the end of the OJ chase, and Al Michaels’ “totally farcical” comment?
Also, I recall seeing Anwar Sadat get assasinated on TV in 1981 or so.
The late Charles Rocket appeared in a “Who Shot JR?” parody in April 1981 and the sketch hit some skids due to Charlene Tilton blowing lines and the writing not being that good in the first place, prompting Rocket to mumble “Who the fuck did it?” It got by far the biggest laugh of the sketch. Rocket was fired.
George Wallace’s campaigning in Maryland was being filmed for Maryland TV and I believe was being aired live (though I’m not 100% positive of that) when Bremer shot him.
Toni Tenille (of Captain & fame) lost a boob from her very low cut gown at a music awards show from the early 80s and was briefly caught on camera.
Christine Lahti received a Golden Globe award for her acting in 1999 and was in the bathroom when her name was called. Jack Nicholson casually announced “It was number two…”.
Yukio Mishima, Japanese activist/writer/homo/nutcase, was aired in his horribly botched seppuku in 1970. I believe his assistant/lover’s decapitation was also caught on live TV.
Wasn’t Howard Cosell also drunk once on air? I caught the biopic with John Turturro (?) as Cosell, and I guess it was the last game of the season and someone had brought several bottles of champagne, and Howard, um, partook.
From the IMDB site:
On October 22, 1986 Jane Dornacker was killed while doing a traffic report on WNBC-AM in New York City. Much to the horror and dismay of radio host Joey Reynolds and the millions of WNBC-AM listeners who heard the terrified voice of Jane Dornacker screaming “HIT THE WATER! HIT THE WATER! HIT THE WATER!” as the helicopter from which she and pilot Bill Pate were reporting, fell from the sky and crashed into the Hudson River. A very shaken Joey Reynolds searched for the right words to say in the tense moments after the transmission breaks off. She died on arrival to Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Jane Dornacker was 38 years old.
Were you living in California then? I was in Florida - there’s that time difference.
I was lifting weights at the gym in college when they broke into the radio broadcast with the news, I remember it clearly. It was around noon or so which would make it 9 on the west coast.