If you happened to be watching WCVB-TV 5 earlier this evening, you witnessed perhaps the most bizarre live television meltdown since the infamous WHDH-7 newscast blackout of 2006.
At 10:29pm, ABC's Eli Stone series abruptly vanished mid-sentence, with a brief static image featuring the station logo appearing for a few seconds, followed by roughly three minutes of a black screen.
But the absence of video wasn't the real story- it was that viewers were hearing a live newsroom audio feed the entire time! We caught Ed Harding and the weatherman making jokes, smalltalk and discussing a baseball game. The latter practiced his weather tease three times.
LUCKILY, and I do mean luckily, Harding and the rest of the news team seemingly kept the language clean, didn't criticize anybody or say anything incriminating. Whew, that was a close call, guys. It could have been ugly.
Finally, there was a spot break, followed by the live 11pm news tease they'd been prepping for. But they didn't seem to be aware that almost three minutes of their supposedly-private conversation went out live for all to hear.
Did anybody get this on Tivo? It begs to be uploaded to YouTube. A closer listen might reveal more of what was said.
