We take the challenge of producing and airing television for granted. Shit often happens and to be honest, it’s kind of a miracle it doesn’t happen even more often.
Today we got a bit of a taste of all the things that can go wrong, but rarely do as Highly Questionable aired today out of order on ESPN (video at the end). It seems today’s episode was edited together incorrectly and thus the second half of the episode aired for about 12 minutes before the first half starts completes the half hour episode. For some it wasn’t that noticeable, but many did chime in on the awkwardness.
https://twitter.com/ThompsonTryant/status/1361764008219586561
@espn why did @HQonESPN just end 20 minutes early? #confused
— John Burke (@BurkeTime) February 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/oldschoolhugh/status/1361764397337563137
Today’s @HQonESPN was directed by Quentin Tarantino.
— Chris Corcoran (@corcoran1973) February 16, 2021
It is bad enough that @HQonESPN had Junior Golic on yesterday. But why is today's show like a Tarintino movie? It ran the middle, end, the the beginning!
— Brian C. Lorio (@bclorio) February 16, 2021
Did someone at @espn flip the order of the tapes for today's @HQonESPN show?
— Paul Merca (former blue check) (@paulmerca70601) February 16, 2021
So… @HQonESPN is just over at 2:42 now?
— W⭕rld's Greatest Chad (@chaddychoo) February 16, 2021
Sarah Spain commented on the mishap by saying a power outage may have been the culprit.
https://twitter.com/SarahSpain/status/1361765500485853188
Here is what it looked like. The show opens with the following clip. No intros or salutations.
12 minutes in the show does a pretty standard sign off. At that point in time, you could have surmised that the episode was cut down to just 15 minutes.
But then upon coming back from commercial break, the show restarts from its intended beginning which has the usual show opening introductions and dove into their first topic.
We complete the circle in time as Highly Questionable ends the episode teasing the topics that the show opened wth 25 minutes earlier. After this clip, the show never returned instead airing about 4 minutes of commercial before The Jump started.
I’ll admit I was half watching and didn’t catch it immediately. I’m sure other people are in that boat. That said, it’s a pretty awkward yet interesting production error. At least you got the whole show, albeit sticked together out of order.
Power outage from a once a year storm. All remote panelists and production because a once in a century pandemic. Things happen, especially with the extra level of difficulty factoring in those circumstances. It certainly was odd but for me it was more of an entertaining reminder of how hard it is to produce television more than any type of legitimate nuisance.
