First Things First already lost an hour by relocating from mornings to afternoons last week. On Tuesday, Nick Wright’s FS1 show was reduced by another 30 minutes because of technical issues.
“Today was the first day I’ve missed doing mornings. I’ve been DYING to talk about that MNF game all day. The insane coaching, Russ’ play, the bizarreness of it all,” Wright tweeted on Tuesday.
Unfortunately, Wright was forced to wait even longer than expected.
Scheduled to begin at 3pm EST, First Things First went live with no audio Tuesday afternoon. Following two minutes of silence, FS1 abruptly went to commercial and returned with a three-year-old special featuring Shannon Sharpe, Tony Gonzalez and Rob Gronkowski. At 3:26pm, FS1 began a rerun of Colin Cowherd’s The Herd. And finally, at 3:30, First Things First was back on-air with the important aspect of audio.
“I would like to apologize to America and to my coworkers,” First Things First co-host Kevin Wildes said, jokingly blaming the technical difficulties on a recent hot take. “It blew out the audio for the first half hour of the show, but we are back. Thanks for bearing with us.”
30 minutes is a really long time for any show to have no audio. But it was especially surprising for a show that featured all of its hosts in studio. With the afternoon iteration of First Things First premiering last week, Wright, Wildes and Chris Broussard returned to New York’s FS1 studio for the first time since before COVID-19. One week after their grand return, the FS1 studio failed them.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com