Doing shows live on location often increases the chance of technical difficulties. That was certainly the case for Pat McAfee’s show in Boulder, Colorado Friday, following ESPN’s also-on-location First Take and ahead of their on-location College GameDay (which McAfee also appears on) and actual game broadcast Saturday. Stephen A. Smith stuck around after First Take for an interview with McAfee, but while that seemed to work fine on YouTube, it had no audio for quite a while on ESPN. Here’s where that audio came back:
Pat McAfee's live show Friday started with an interview with Stephen A. Smith, but the audio didn't go through on ESPN. Here's where it came back. pic.twitter.com/yeRp3EdPY9
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 15, 2023
There, McAfee discusses that with “That conversation about the Worldwide Leader was not heard on the Worldwide Leader. No audio on ESPN. But on YouTube, certainly. I wouldn’t say we have a bigger audience on there, but we do. One day, we’ll hopefully be able to catch up to you on First Take.”
And here’s McAfee discussing it in more detail a little later, following crowd chants praising Smith as he exited the set:
And here’s McAfee discussing it on-air later: pic.twitter.com/975bdrocE6
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 15, 2023
For those looking for audio of that conversation, it can be found around the 22-minute mark on the YouTube broadcast here:
As noted, technical issues happen, and at least the audio here seemed to work for those listening in person or watching on YouTube. (Contrary to McAfee’s on-air claim, though, that audience isn’t necessarily larger. His debut show last week pulled in 440,000 total viewers on YouTube and 228,000 average viewers on ESPN.) But it is interesting to see those technical difficulties, especially for a show ESPN has invested so much in.
This is also part of a wide full-court-press of coverage ESPN is running ahead of Colorado’s game against Colorado State (10 p.m. ET Saturday, ESPN). The Buffaloes are favored by 23.5 points there, so that’s normally not something that would get not just College GameDay, but also Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff on location, to say nothing of the ESPN studio shows also airing from their Friday. (And Colorado head coach Deion Sanders is guesting on many of those, including on McAfee’s show before Smith, and on First Take, where he brought out sunglasses for the panel in response to Jay Norvell’s criticism of him wearing sunglasses in interviews.)
But the media world is currently fascinated with Sanders, especially after the Buffaloes’ season-opening win over 2022-23 national runner-up TCU. So it makes some sense to send the studio shows out there, especially with GameDay also originating from Boulder this weekend. But that does come with an increased chance for technical difficulties, as we saw here.
[Awful Announcing on Twitter]
