Live TV can be painful

From my journal during my internship at The Late Show With David Letterman:


Part of the beauty of live television is that there's only so much that can be rehearsed, and surprises are bound to happen.  While this leads to a lot of funny, spontaneous moments, it also can lead to some... well, rather painful spontaneous moments.  The latter was the case when Super Bowl-winning [bearded football star] was a guest this week. As part of his interview, there was supposed to be a plug for [a specific brand of] razors.  The idea was to shave his beard on the air and show the results, finishing with a close-up and sparkle graphics keyed over his nice, clean, smooth face -- a simple bit, begun and completed in the same segment.  However, no one counted on this particular shave being the worst shave any one had ever seen in their lives.  It started off okay... for about two seconds... but [football star]'s flinching made it evident pretty quickly that this might not be the smooth shave [the razor brand] was hoping would help plug their product.... Add to that the fact that the shave was taking much longer than expected, and rather than showing it all at once in one continuous sequence of shots, the control room decided to just show it periodically throughout the show [because showing a man being shaved on late night television would otherwise have clearly made for a riveting piece of television... or not....].  But because it was a promo and not just the show's own bit, we still had to keep showing it until it was over....  At least one "extra" [comedy bits excluding the monologue, top ten, and interviews] had to be cut in order to make room for it -- and to make things worse, the razor was clearly cutting him badly enough that the cuts and blood were showing up on the screen. 

Finally, as the episode that was now about a man being shaved came to an end and the shave was at last complete (or close enough), they did the planned zoom-in with sparkles over his face.... And rather than being nicely shaved as those sparkles sparkled all over the screen, the poor guy was bleeding and looking quite surly.  I wonder how many men will pick tomorrow as their first day to start growing a beard....

Such is the nature of live TV.