TSN was embarrassed this week during their NHL trade deadline coverage when the network didn’t keep a close enough eye on or filter their TradeCentre hashtag.  The network displayed the above tweet from @AdragnaA21, which was a joke about Joffrey Lupul of the Maple Leafs having an affair with the wife of teammate Dion Phaneuf, actress Elisha Cuthbert.

Usually when these things happen a screenshot gets passed around Twitter, we all giggle, and life goes on.  Not so in this case.  First Lupul got heated with the network on Twitter and then the threatened legal action came – the trio of athletes and celebs threatened a lawsuit against TSN and Mr. @AdragnaA21, “demanding that TSN issue a formal apology and pay a significant amount of damages to each of our clients for broadcasting a false and defamatory tweet during their trade deadline show.”  I’m not sure how good it looks for multi-millionaire celebs and athletes threatening a money grab over a tweet, but that’s another story for another day.

Given the fallout, that one momentary lapse has now turned into a bloody nightmare for TSN.  They’ve had to offer multiple apologies over the matter and the controversy has dragged on for multiple days.  Now the network is taking a proactive step to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  According to NHL.com, TSN is done showing tweets on the air:

TSN says it will no longer air public tweets during live coverage after the all-sports network accidentally carried an inflammatory post from a viewer about Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul and team captain Dion Phaneuf’s wife during Monday’s NHL trade deadline show.

A spokesman for TSN would not discuss how the offensive tweet, which ran on a live crawl at the bottom of the screen, made it to air.

But Greg McIsaac did say “going forward TSN will not be airing public tweets during our live broadcasts.”

The network read an apology on the air Tuesday night after a lawyer representing Phaneuf, his wife Elisha Cuthbert and Lupul threatened legal action.

TSN said the tweet was broadcast despite protocols to prevent unfounded and inappropriate social media posts from running on the air.

Thank goodness.  Now if only other networks will follow suit.

Reflect on this – when was the last time you ever thought to yourself, “WOW, that tweet ESPN just showed was awesome!  I learned so much from that 140 character message from some athlete where half the characters were exclamation points!”

Seriously.  How many times do we have to suffer through inanity like this?

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Thanks LeBron!  What insight!  I would have never realized that a team scoring a touchdown would have been a good thing without ESPN showing me this tweet.  What a divine revelation.  It’s like they don’t even need to pay Gruden or Tirico at all!  Just show a running scroll of what LeBron is tweeting and that’s all we need.

Tweets add nothing to broadcasts.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  All it does is clutter the screen while providing zero substance.  If I’m watching television, there’a high likelihood that I do not care what some random person says on Twitter about the thing I’m watching.  I don’t care about your hashtag.  I don’t care about what’s trending.  If I did, you know where I would be?  Twitter.  Tweets are meant for Twitter.  They should stay there.

[NHL.com]