Anyone turning into CBS’ halftime show during the AFC Championship looking for coherent analysis of Sunday’s game between the Bengals and Chiefs came away sorely disappointed.
As is often the case, CBS sent its studio crew to Kansas City to cover the game on site, and had a desk set up on the field at Arrowhead Stadium for halftime. There was just one problem: the Chiefs also brought in halftime entertainment in the form of country singer Walker Hayes, and for whatever reason, a huge set of speakers was set up directly behind the CBS crew.
The result was a halftime show that was almost completely inaudible, as the musical performance drowned out pretty much all of the analysis.
Huh? This is brutal. pic.twitter.com/hxtrLtR4o7
— Cork Gaines, Ph.D. (@CorkGaines) January 30, 2022
absolutely one of the funniest NFL moments ever pic.twitter.com/KqyEQPUeC6
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 30, 2022
Boomer please don't ever do that again pic.twitter.com/QrwpddvLhx
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) January 30, 2022
The crew was well aware of the issue. At one point, Boomer Esiason couldn’t stop laughing, and he openly admitted that he couldn’t hear what any of the other analysts were saying. By the end of the segment, host James Brown was essentially relying on hand gestures to try to convey his questions to the rest of the desk.
The whole thing was a debacle from start to finish. It is hard to imagine that CBS was not aware this could be a problem, and it’s not clear why they didn’t try to come up with a way to at least negate some of the noise. Perhaps they simply had no way of doing so.
As much of a mess as the broadcast was, the whole spectacle was definitely funny. Honestly, in the grand scheme of technical difficulties, this doesn’t even compare to some of the bigger messes we’ve seen. It is certainly one of the most memorable, though.
