Best screw-up I ever heard live on-the-air was about 18 months ago.... The folksy host on the QR77 late afternoon show had a prize to give away, and asked for people to call in. A few minutes later, he started answering calls. The dialogue was priceless:
Host: We've got Mohammed on the line.
Kid: Hello?
Host: Is this Mohammed?
Kid: Yeah. (In perfect "accent-free" Canadian English)
Host: You don't sound like a Mohammed.
Kid: What?
Host: I said you don't sound like a Mohammed.
Kid: What do you mean?
<crickets>
Host: Uh...
<crickets>
I can't remember how it ended, but the sound of the host's silence as he realized his gaff was priceless. I couldn't believe that he actually repeated his gaff a second time, but he did! I know it's old, but I get a huge laugh every time I think of this thing... did anybody else hear this? I'm thinking it was probably November 2006.
What's the worst gaffe you've ever heard / seen in the mass media?
edit: ironic that I would misspell the word "gaffe" in a public forum.
Last edited by Cube Inmate; 03-25-2008 at 02:15 PM.
I heard Jack-FM play the same newscast 2 mornings in a row.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
this is a great one. I love the way he addresses it after.
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The great CP is in dire need of prunes!
"That's because the productive part of society is adverse to giving up all their wealth so you libs can conduct your social experiments. Experience tells us your a bunch of snake oil salesman...Sucks to be you." ~Calgaryborn 12/06/09 keeping it really stupid!
Last edited by fatso; 03-24-2008 at 08:50 AM.
Reason: perhaps some NSFW language if your boss is nearby.
Until I see otherwise, that one will always be the undisputed king. I'm convinced this is just a college newscast for college students, as it looks similar to the crappy newscasts we'd put out at MRC on Fridays when I was in the Broadcasting program. Also, despite how legendarily awful he was, the guys up in the room didn't do him any favours by constantly showing the wrong graphics/clips. Just all-in-all one big ****show.
I'm too lazy to see if there's a YouTube of it, but Don Taylor referred to Anaheim as the "Mighty Dykes" once about 10 years ago, and spent the rest of the show giggling like a 10 year old girl.
I love looking at these on Youtube, SO many gooders. This one was about Bills TE Kevin Everett, who - for you that don't know - suffered near paralysis on a collision in Week 1 this past season.
Guaranteed the bonehead in editing watched the first few seconds, saw a big, athletic-looking black guy in a wheelchair and thought it was the Everett clip, and plugged it in there.
A November 15, 1992 piece in the New York Times explored the then recent phenomenon of "grunge" and included a sidebar discussion entitled "Lexicon of Grunge: Breaking the Code," which defined the hip new "grunge speak... Unfortunately for the New York Times , the slang was pure invention.
More of a hoax than a gaffe, but it's the New York Times. It was a gaffe on their part to be so easily burned.
I was actually working for the company that designed the database and graphics system at the time this happened (I wasn't involved in this particular project though). We received a lot of panicked phone calls that day.
Gaffes in the media... d'oh!
