While strolling through YouTube, I found this YouTube clip of Jessica Savitch yelling at her production staff. Unfortunately there’s no info in the description and the comments have been blocked. Was this accidently on-air? If not, how did it get out? Is this related in any way to the botched update referred to in this article?
Well, first of all, i don’t think your clip is from 1983.
In her practice run, she appears to be discussing the hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Iran, which ran from late 1979 through early 1981. The content of the story also suggests that this was probably during Abulhassan Banisadr’s short term as president, before he went into exile in July, 1980.
She also mentions a 30" snowfall in Buffalo, but i couldn’t find out anything about that.
Here’s the update where she was allegedly on drugs. This one actually went out on air. It’s kind of creepy because you’re watching the ultimate destruction of the career of a woman who would be dead shortly after.
The one you linked to, I suspect, was captured off a satellite feed, but I’ll never be able to prove it. It just seems like an off-camera outtake like those you occasionally see from people who think that because it went to commercial nobody can see what’s going on.
I thought this thread would involve either Linda Ellerbee or The Day After.
Also, when the OP mentioned Jessica Savitch, I thought, “oh yeah, reporter lady, right? I wonder where she is now?” Dead for more than a quarter century, as it turns out.
Huh. Based on your link, she apparently went to high school with my mother. I wonder if they knew each other.
December 1-3, 1979. The Buffalo snow clinched it.
To expand on that, before the networks started scrambling their content anyone with a big dish and the right receiver could watch the raw network feeds. They either didn’t know the camera was on or didn’t care because the affiliates would insert commercials in their local broadcasts instead of whatever was coming over the satellite.
You know … it was bad, but not as bad as it’s commonly described. I’ve seen that clip before, but remembered her being a lot less coherent. She was clearly impaired in some way, though.
Savitch was famous (or notorious) for blowing up at her crew, then pulling it together and being great on camera. There were a couple of quickie biographies after her death that suggested she had meltdowns even before her problems with booze and cocaine.
Judging by the way the clip started, I think she had been taping her prime-time update and had either missed a cue or screwed up the timing (having to go exactly 42 seconds, needing a countdown). The crew just kept the tape rolling (in those days, it was videotape) so she could redo it, and caught the hissy fit.
As temper tantrums go, I actually think it’s pretty mild. No screaming obscenties, no throwing things, no name calling.
It was almost like she had had a mild stoke but obviously she didn’t.
Actually, they only scramble some of their feeds some of the time. “Wild” feeds from the field are not usually scrambled, as it is one more thing that can go wrong. These days, networks rely on the fact that you need a digital receiver and need a lot more information (symbol rate, frequency, PIDS, etc) to get the feed.
Harry Schearer has been collecting embarrassing wild feeds for years and is still doing so today.
The OP’s clip actually seems like run-of-the-mill studio stuff to me. There’s nothing in it that points to out-of-control behaviour.