Chris Myers and Mark Schlereth sounded like they were calling the game through a tin can for during Fox's Panthers-Jets broadcast. Credit: Fox Sports
By Sam Neumann on

Fox had some audio issues Sunday afternoon.

During the Panthers-Jets game, the broadcast booth sounded like Chris Myers and Mark Schlereth were calling the action through a tin can connected by string. The audio problems started on Carolina’s first offensive drive and lasted 10-15 minutes before Fox finally got it sorted out.

It didn’t last the entire first quarter, but it was long enough for viewers to wonder if they’d accidentally tuned into a broadcast from the Great Depression era.

The sound quality was muffled, distant, and had that unmistakable crackle of old-time radio. Myers and Schlereth might as well have been announcing Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics.

Viewers immediately took to social media to roast the audio quality, with comparisons ranging from the 1940s to the 1960s to “straight underwater.” Some thought they were listening to a local radio broadcast. Others wondered if Fox was trying out a retro broadcast experiment.

Needless to say, it wasn’t.

The audio eventually returned to normal by the next commercial break, and the broadcast continued without further issues. But for those 10-15 minutes, anyone watching Panthers-Jets got an unintentional history lesson in how sports broadcasts used to sound nearly a century ago.

Fox has dealt with its share of audio problems over the years. In 2022, Myers and Schlereth lost the audio for more than two minutes at the start of a Giants-Jaguars broadcast. Schlereth later joked that his unaired commentary “was my best work by far in all the years I’ve been doing this.”

This wasn’t quite that long, but for those 10-15 minutes, Fox gave viewers an authentic 1940s radio experience whether they wanted it or not.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann