Fan on the street interviews often take some turns, and that’s been seen multiple times at Stanley Cup parades. The latest came at the Florida Panthers’ championship parade Sunday along the beaches in Fort Lauderdale. There, WPLG 10 Local News (the Miami ABC affiliate)’s Alexis Frazier was interviewing fans along the parade route, and one Florida woman decided to express some rather profane love for Panthers’ forward Matthew Tkachuk. And that led to a notable response from Frazier:
“Let’s just say Matthew Tkachuk is a f***ing baller!” “Oh, okay! This is live TV! We don’t need to cuss on live TV!” WPLG Local 10 News Miami’s Alexis Frazier recovered well from a Panthers’ fan’s f-bomb during an interview at the team’s Stanley Cup parade. (H/T @mikefountains.) pic.twitter.com/7DEeOkWHKV
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 30, 2024
The “I’ve got to monitor that” near the end is funny too. But it should be noted that it’s incredibly difficult for reporters to predict who’s going to say what in these kinds of situations, which is why we wind up with so many fan interview f-bombs. (Which do also happen with interviews of actually notable people, including athletes.) And hey, at least there wasn’t any nudity here.
Street interviews and championship coverage can both be difficult. And street interviews during championship coverage certainly can lead to f-bombs like this. But the quick response from Frazier to take the mic from the fan was notable, as was her quick comment on how fans’ comments like that don’t fly on broadcast TV.
Whether anyone should care about broadcast profanity in 2024 is a different question. And there are people on both sides of that debate. But the FCC does sometimes care about profanity on broadcast networks (albeit not as much as they care about misuse of emergency alert tones) in a way they don’t for cable or streaming broadcasts. So it’s understandable why Frazier wasn’t thrilled with this fan’s response here. But she managed to handle this pretty lightly and keep the parade celebration coverage going without further f-bombs.
[Awful Announcing on X/Twitter]
