New Zealand’s pre-eminent former state broadcaster has announced it will hold an immediate inquiry into what caused the blunder leading to an horrific mix-up live on-air last night when celebrity fashion-plate Mike Hoskings appeared to read a news item instead of a list of abusive tweets sent in by outraged viewers.
“We’re not sure exactly what happened,” senior network communications adviser Lila Lyrapanstonfire told WWNews, explaining the basic premise of TVNZ’s news coverage. “As for the Hoskings debacle, it would seem that somehow the autocue reverted to an old script, possibly from last century, that contained an actual news introduction, when Mikey should have been reading some nasty abusive emailly stuff created by our marketing department.”
Ms Lyrapanstonfire said staff had already taken steps to prevent a reoccurrence. “We can only say we’re very sorry and it won’t happen again. The news item, I mean – we’re stuck with I mean committed to Hoskings for the foreseeable future, and the future that we can’t foresee but hope won’t be as bad as what we have now.”
TVNZ has moved to replace all its information programming with the reading of abusive texts, emails and twitters directed at its presenters, Ms Lyrapanstonfire said, because they were a more reliable source of content than “having to keep pestering the people at the Herald for stuff”.
Mike Hoskings was thankfully unavailable for comment.
I am keen to see the end of this kind of faulty broadcasting. Is there any way Mr Hosking might be removed from our airways?