Armen Keteyian was in the NFL control room when the power went out
During the blackout that took place during Sunday's Super Bowl, CBS's Armen Keteyian was actually in the NFL's control room conducting an interview with Frank Supovitz, who was in charge of the NFL's Super Bowl gameday operations. During the interview, which was recorded for 60 Minutes Sports, Keteyian and Supovitz were talking about the halftime show starring Beyonce when all of a sudden.... the power went out in the control room and half of the stadium.
To his credit, Keteyian stood back and let Supovitz and his staff do their jobs in an attempt to get the power back on. But despite the inside look at the control room, it's a little bizarre to see that the NFL's staff really had no immediate answers for *why* the power went out (and still doesn't), but all things considered, I think they handled things the best that they could have.
You know what would have been nice during the broadcast? If instead of going to James Brown, Solomon Wilcots, and the rest of the NFL Today staff for an extended halftime show, CBS got a camera on Keteyian for updates since he was right in the thick of things. That was a huge opportunity that the network missed to inform viewers about what was going on instead of the path they took, which was to babble the same things over and over again with no confidence.
[Showtime]
What they are talkng about when they say that Beyonce's Halftime report went over by 3 minutes, is that the Super Bowl Halftime Show is suppose to take 22 minutes, but normally takes between 27-30 minutes and normally ends up taking more than it's alloted time!
"You know what would have been nice during the broadcast? If instead of going to James Brown, Solomon Wilcots, and the rest of the NFL Today staff for an extended halftime show, CBS got a camera on Keteyian for updates since he was right in the thick of things."
Keteyian's CBS News crew probably had cameras recording to tape or hard drive with no link to the CBS Sports live production truck. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the NFL expressly forbade a live feed from the control room as a condition of access.
So what was Keteyian and his crew supposed to to, then? Stop news-gathering in the middle of an evolving story to deliver the same vague "they're working on it" reports that could have been delivered by Steve Tasker? And how would they get that to the sports crew? Phone? Running tapes down the stairs because the elevators on that side of the field were out?
Besides, it's not like the National Football League and its primary broadcast partner for the freakin' Super Bowl wouldn't already have lines of communication blazing with activity while all this was going on.
