David Muir and ABC World News Tonight Smacked by Back-to-Back Technical Problems to Start Show: ‘Obviously, We’re Having Some Issues Here’

ABC’s David Muir started the World News Tonight broadcast with two quick strikes against him on Tuesday when back-to-back technical issues hit the show just a minute after it began.

Muir did the show’s introduction and then attempted to throw it to reporter Matt Rivers in Minneapolis, where he was covering the fallout from the Alex Pretti shooting. But that didn’t go according to plan.

Instead, 17 seconds of dead air followed and the broadcast froze on an image of two men — one presumably being Pretti. The chyron on the screen read: CHILLING NEW DETAILS IN PRETTI SHOOTING.

ABC then cut back to Muir in studio.

“Obviously, we’re having some issues here,” Muir said.

He quickly and deftly pivoted to a different story on a major storm brewing along the East Coast.

“This comes as tens of millions deal with this life-threatening cold tonight into tomorrow. Here’s Victor Oquendo on that tonight,” Muir said.

But — as often happens when one technical issue impacts the precise symphony that is a live newscast — another technical difficulty popped up. The broadcast did not switch over to its Miami correspondent and kept the camera on Muir, who sat for 12 seconds at the anchor’s desk in silence. Viewers saw him look down and seemingly shuffle some papers around, based on the audio, before he looked up and said there was another issue.

“We await Victor’s piece too,” Muir said.

Muir nonchalantly pivoted again, this time to ABC chief meteorologist Ginger Zee, who was standing by with her own weather report ready to go.

“Obviously this is what happens with live television from time-to-time, but you’ll take us right through this forecast.”

“You know I will, David,” Zee assured him.

Things went smoothly from there.

An ABC source told Mediaite about the incident, “Everyone gets hit with technical gremlins. David stayed calm and carried on with the show. It’s what you do.”

Watch above via ABC.

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