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Intruder Invades Live NFL Play-By-Play Booth Asking For A Drink
It happened in the Baltimore Ravens booth Sunday as the game was on - a woman who called herself a "veteran" climbed into the booth from the stadium seats while the action was going on and the broadcast was live - and asked for a drink. One of the announcers can be heard saying with some alarm, "What are you doing? What are you doing?" even as his colleague calls a play on the field.
No harm was done but the entire thing was caught on audio which you can hear here.
Given all the security around these days, you have to wonder how this happened.
Still, something equally weird once took place right here in Toronto a very long time ago. I know it occurred because someone who was there that night told me about it.
It was around 1985, long before 9/11 made everyone extremely security conscious. At the time, City TV (you had to know it was them, right?) was located at 99 Queen St. E. They had an entrance on Queen, which led directly into the reception area. Because it was such an unusual place and the building was never really designed to be a TV station, its control room was right off that front desk, separated from the public only by a sliding patio-like glass door, which was usually left open to allow air to circulate. You had to pass through it to get to the actual studio where Gord Martineau and Dini Petty were anchoring the news.
It was a few minutes past six on this fateful day and the show had just gone on the air. The late, great Clint Nickerson was producing and my friend was also in the back end of the control room with him. Suddenly and without any warning, a guy with a scraggly black beard, wild hair and tattered clothes simply walked through that partition door and started wandering through the room, looking around.
With a perturbed and alarmed look on his voice, Nickerson turned to the bum, who had meandered in off the street, and asked him in a somewhat bemused tone, "Can I help you?
To which the bum gave one of the great answers of all time. "No," he shrugged. "I'm just looking."
And with that he stepped out of the control area, went right by reception and left by the front door. No one ever saw him again.
City later had much better security installed after that incident and the new building at 299 Queen W. needed a pass card to get by the reception area. But I'm told those who were there at the time were struggling to keep the show on the air as it all unfolded behind them.
Given all the things we know now, I'm stunned about what happened in that radio booth on Sunday. It seems impossible someone could just climb in that way. But as you can hear from the audio, it happened.
- MJ Vancouver
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Re: Intruder Invades Live NFL Play-By-Play Booth Asking For A Drink
I said it before and I’ll say it again, someone needs to write a book about Citytv and its news department. There is likely no TV newsroom anywhere in North America with as colourful a history as CITY.
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Re: Intruder Invades Live NFL Play-By-Play Booth Asking For A Drink
Here's another City story. Different but equally bizarre. It was a hot day in the summer and someone at City was doing the weather on Queen St. W., as they often did the forecast outside. I always felt they were just asking for trouble doing that, and on this day, it found them.
As the weather person (it could have been David Onley, it's lost to history) was giving details about what to expect, ordinary people wandered by in the background. Most of them were in the shot but probably didn't even realize it. And then one guy walked by right behind the camera. It could have been anyone. But it wasn't.
This particular pedestrian was completely naked, not a stitch of clothing on him anywhere. I'm not sure if the folks of the city (and the folks at City) got a frontal or rear shot or both, but there was no mistaking what was on display.
It may have been a sunny day, but they were looking at places where the sun shouldn't shine.
When the control room figured out what was going on, they ordered the camera guy to zoom in tight on their weatherperson and to wrap it up as fast as possible.
A few minutes later, Gord Martineau appeared on camera giving an apology to "those who saw anything unusual during our weather segment."
As for the guy who made the nudes on the news? He disappeared into the crowd and I don't think anyone knew where he came from or where he went. (Where does a naked man go to hide? Hopefully not Speaker's Corner!) It was over almost as fast as it began. But it was another moment in the weird and wild history of the Moses-run City TV.
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Thread Starter- RadioActive
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Re: Intruder Invades Live NFL Play-By-Play Booth Asking For A Drink
I just remembered one last item from my friend, who regaled me with City TV stories for over an hour. But this one, while odd, was rather sad. Sometimes when the weather guy was away, City would do something called "Guest Weather." This consisted of having a celebrity of some sort read the script over the graphics.
It usually wasn't very smooth, because most of the time, the person wasn't a TV presenter and knew next to nothing about broadcasting. But just to see someone well known doing something unusual was a nice gimmick - and highly promotable.
It may have been a friend of Jim McKenny, I'm honestly not sure, but on one infamous guest weather segment, they managed to get a fairly well known hockey player to do the forecast. I can't remember his name but he might have played for the Leafs. So we'll call him "Mr. Hockey Star."
He came into City in the afternoon and they gave him the script, asking him to go over it, make sure he understood what he had to do and ask any questions he might have. But Mr. Hockey Star was game, so to speak, and assured them he could pull this off.
They promoted the appearance heavily because Toronto is a hockey-crazy town at the best of times, and inevitably the time for this legendary appearance came around 6:30 PM. They threw to him and Mr. Hockey Star just stood there. He then started talking randomly about what a nice afternoon he'd had, how he loved Queen St. W., how well he hoped his team would be doing that year and on and on. But, after rambling on for over 40 secs. he'd yet to mention the weather.
Uh oh. The director spoke into his IFB calmly and in a whisper. "Read the script!" she pleaded. But no, he went on and on and on about nothing. At this point, the producer in the control room is losing his mind. "TELL HIM TO GET TO THE FUCKING WEATHER!" Again the request is passed along, and this time, they even go to the weather graphics, trying to lead him.
But he continues to fumfer around, never looking at the script even once. Finally, the producer tells them to just throw back to the anchor, who will throw to break. The show resumes after the commercials, and Mr. Hockey Star is benched.
It's now 7 o'clock and everyone races upstairs, with the producer in a lather over how poorly this heavily promoted segment went. To put it mildly, it was a complete disaster. Why did Mr. Hockey Star do that? Everyone was dying to know. And the answer wasn't anything they could ever have imagined.
It turns out the guy was completely illiterate. He couldn't read a word of what was on those pages and he never told anyone that before he went on the air. Why he thought he could get away with doing the weather without the ability to decipher a script was never clear. But his hockey talents apparently made it possible for him to hide his lack of education for years and he thought he could bluff his way through the segment.
And that was the day the weather never aired on City TV. I think they did do guest weather again, but they always checked in advance that the person could at the very least read what they'd been given.
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Thread Starter- The Weed
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Re: Intruder Invades Live NFL Play-By-Play Booth Asking For A Drink
May have been Eddie Shack.