That teleprompter glitch taught me to never trust the screen at 6am

I was filling in for a buddy at a small local station in Dayton and the producer told me to just read whatever the prompter showed, even if it looked wrong. Sure enough, on the 6am live hit, the text froze mid-sentence and then jumped to the next story about a goat rescue. I kept a straight face and said 'and that's the latest on the goat situation' with zero context, which somehow made it to the station's blooper reel. My buddy laughed for a solid 10 minutes when he saw it, but the producer gave me a high five for not panicking. Now I always glance at the printed script they leave on the desk, saved me twice last week when the system lagged again. Has anyone else had a live read go sideways because the tech decided to take a nap?

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wood.uma1mo ago

Did the producer actually praise you or were they just glad you didn't melt down on live TV? Honestly, reading a frozen prompter is basic stuff, you just look at the paper and keep talking. The real test is when your earpiece dies mid-sentence and you have to fake a whole segment from memory, that's when panic sets in.

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