4.03.2007

What A Screw Up


This morning at 7:00 a.m., The Today Show fired up while I was combing my golden locks in the bathroom. Mysteriously, I heard the audio go out only to be replaced by the National Weather Service warning and then quickly by the earsplitting Amber Alert sound. I walk out and looked at the TV only to catch the final seconds of a scrolling banner at the top that listed "Tarrant and Wise" Counties. Huh? A weather banner during an Amber Alert? Then, to confuse matters more, a pre-recorded voice came over the air to warn me of a child abduction in Italy. The voice even tells me the name (Jahmar Toliver) and date of birth of the abductor I should be looking out for.

Oops.

When the station broke for the local news at 7:25 a.m., anchor Deborah Ferguson had to tell me, "We need to let you know about a technical problem that happened at the top of the hour on NBC 5. An Amber Alert, canceled yesterday, aired on NBC 5 just after 7 this morning. This was a mistake. Maintenance crews are trying to fix the audio and video problems."Maintenance crews???? And no explanation of the scrolling weather bulletin that went along with it.

Anyway, Jahmar is probably face down on the concrete somewhere right now.