From a sports media standpoint, the biggest story coming out of Sunday’s AFC Championship game was probably the CBS halftime show in which the sound blaring from a Walker Hayes performance drowned out The NFL Today crew of James Brown, Phil Simms, Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, and Boomer Esiason.
Esiason addressed the debacle to start his WFAN morning show with Gregg Giannotti, praising Brown for maintaining his professionalism and trying his best to carry the halftime discussion through, despite no one on set being able to hear one another.
But the circumstance of not being able to hear the CBS studio team talk about the first half of Bengals-Chiefs, especially after Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes made a poor decision that prevented the team from scoring a touchdown, let alone a field goal, made for a frustrating viewing experience. Although it was also funny watching the CBS crew trying to communicate during a difficult audio situation.
The halftime blunder was a topic of discussion for Gresh and Keefe Monday morning on Boston’s WEEI. Besides making fun of Hayes and his “Fancy Like” song that Applebee’s turned into a national sensation, Rich Keefe wondered if producers should have quickly conceded that the audio issue wasn’t going to be fixed before halftime ended.
“I feel like at this stage of the game, you might as well let the halftime show breathe a little bit,” Keefe said.
“Like the Super Bowl, we’re not gonna listen to the NBC crew break it down while Eminem’s in the background. No, we’re just gonna watch Eminem, and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, right? They’re not gonna be down on the field with Chris Simms screaming over those guys.”
You can listen to the entire segment here.
Keefe went on to say that for special occasions or deeper into the playoffs, leagues and networks feature halftime entertainment anyway. The obvious difference is that those situations are planned far in advance, while this wasn’t.
Also, the natural instinct for CBS producers and engineers was to try and fix the problem, to salvage a halftime show that was quickly slipping away. How quickly should such a decision to just give up and go with the Walker Hayes musical performance have been made?
