Fox Sports might want to take a stroll around downtown Jacksonville.
That’s because viewers noticed that the B-roll used after the Jaguars beat the Panthers, 26-10, in Week 1 featured the Jacksonville Landing. The Landing hasn’t existed since 2019.
The festival marketplace was demolished more than five years ago after the city bought it out and tore it down. Fox apparently didn’t get the memo.
Jacksonville residents weren’t thrilled to see their demolished landmark on national TV.
This isn’t as egregious as ABC airing footage of the Twin Towers during a Knicks game, but it comes at an interesting time. During the same broadcast window, Ian Eagle made a point of showing actual New Jersey locations instead of generic Manhattan shots during a Jets game.
The Landing opened in 1987 as part of Jacksonville’s downtown revitalization efforts. For over 30 years, it was a recognizable part of the city’s skyline, as a two-level glass-and-steel complex with an orange roof sitting on the north bank of the St. Johns River.
But the 126,000-square-foot center struggled financially for years. Foot traffic never reached projected numbers, and stores kept closing. A mass shooting at a video game tournament in 2018 accelerated its demise.
The city took control in 2019, paid $18 million to buy out the remaining tenants, and demolished the entire complex. Demolition began in October 2019 and wrapped up shortly after.
Fox using five-year-old footage is an odd choice. The Landing was a recognizable part of Jacksonville’s downtown, and showing it after a Jaguars game probably confused viewers who knew it was gone.
Networks use outdated B-roll all the time, but this was particularly noticeable. It’s not like they showed an old shot of some random street corner. They showed a major downtown attraction that no longer exists.
Maybe Fox should take a page from Ian Eagle’s book and actually show what cities look like now, not what they looked like five years ago.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.