Technical Difficulties: How Many Times Can A Satellite Delay Interrupt This CNN Segment?

Journalists, they’re just like us! Every dropped call and frustrating reception debacle we laypeople have experienced in our lives is greatly put into perspective by this news report on CNN today, where what initially seemed to be a delay and, later, possibly reception loss tore anchor and journalist apart for what seems on screen to be a few slight moments but probably felt like forever for anchor Joe Johns and adrift reporter Joe Carter.

Carter was on the ground at the golf tournament Tiger Woods is currently attempting a comeback at, but he wasn’t able to get much in in terms of what was up with Woods. It all went downhill after the first question, “do you play golf?”, in what appeared to be a quick but manageable delay. After the fourth or fifth attempt at communication, it was clear it wasn’t quite the most manageable of delays. Carter tried to begin explaining the situation with caddie Stevie Williams, only to be left adrift calling “Joe? Stevie?” until both reporters acknowledge the delay has rifted through them (at the beginning of the segment, he called the anchor “John,” so the name salad being thrown out there wasn’t exactly adding to the technically-addled coherence here). It’s just like yelling to your mom on a subway platform, but on national TV.

What makes it particularly funny (and likely made it particularly frustrating for the reporters) is that this isn’t exactly category 5 hurricane coverage– there’s no overt reason for a technical malfunction here. The malfunction was fixed enough to finish up the segment by the end, though, and they were allowed to conclude the discussion. We can’t imagine we’d be half as calm or professional as these two during a segment like this, so a tip of the hat to them.

The segment via CNN below: