Friday was not a good day for Fox’s golf coverage. Their U.S. Open broadcast on FS1 Friday morning saw an explicit conversation about sex broadcast in place of the usual commentary, and then things took a further turn for the worse after the event shifted to Fox Friday afternoon. Around 4:55 p.m. Eastern, in the middle of an interview with Jack Nicklaus, Fox suddenly lost audio, eventually turning to just an aerial shot of the course, then a black screen, and then commercials:
After around six minutes of commercials, including two airings same in-house ad for their World Cup broadcast of Argentina, the broadcast came back, but with no sound and just an “audio difficulties” bug:
After a few minutes of silence with only occasional bursts of music and other noise, the broadcast then went to commercial again after a couple of minutes. Audio finally reemerged after 15 minutes, with lead announcer Joe Buck welcoming viewers back, apologizing for the difficulties, and cracking a joke:
“And so, welcome back to you, second-round coverage continues at this 118th U.S. Open golf championship at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton. The reviews are in, they’re saying we’ve never sounded better. The audio went out, we apologize for our technical difficulties and our audio difficulties. We’ve been dealing with them all day. Sometimes you’re aware of them at home, sometimes you’re not. This time, you were. Let’s go back out…”
Fox Sports PR also apologized on Twitter:
We apologize for our audio difficulties at the U.S. Open Championship and regret any inconvenience.
— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) June 15, 2018
That’s quite the string of technical difficulties. Hopefully things get smoother for Fox as the tournament continues.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.