This article has been checked, double-checked, copy edited and rewritten many times before it made it onto the page today. Unfortunately, live television is less forgiving.
On March 22, freshman Brian Collins anchored a sportscast on NewsLink@9, a student-run broadcast service on campus. Only a few moments into his segment, Collins began to stumble. The rest is Internet lore.
An unfortunate set of circumstances put Collins in the unenviable position of being the butt of an international joke with the punch line, "And boom goes the dynamite."
NewsLink@9 sports director John Duong said the inexperienced Collins volunteered to fill in when none of the other anchors could make it.
"Unfortunately, I put him on," Duong said.
NewsLink@9 uses the automated ParkerVision production system for its live newscasts. The ParkerVision system takes the place of the traditional physical audio and video boards and puts it into a digitized Windows-based format. The entire broadcast has to be preprogrammed before the show starts.
One of the six NewsLink@9 directors said the system works nicely for a scripted news show, but unscripted segments -- and unscripted problems -- can be difficult to direct.
Sophomore Michelle Long, who produced the show that night, said Collins wasn't the only person who froze.
"After the first few words, I knew it wasn't going well," Long said. "I told him to just keep going. Once he started to fumble, we all just looked at each other hoping that he would get through it."
Long said normally they would have ditched, that is, switched to something else.
The director of the show is responsible for following through on the wishes of the producer. The director of the show that night said cutting Collins off and going to a break would probably have looked even worse.
Long said that after the show was over, the crew held the usual afterward meeting, and while Collins seemed a little shaken up, no one thought much of it. After all, mistakes are not uncommon at NewsLink@9, which is a learning program offered to all students.
Another student who works for NewsLink@9 posted the clip to his blog and e-mailed the popular Web site Ebaum's World to ask if it was interested in the clip. The Web site picked the video up and posted it a week later.
For anyone who's ever had the experience of being on a stage, Collins' video clip is painful to watch. And yet it has been watched. Perhaps by even millions of people. The clip spread like wildfire, with links appearing on Internet message boards from California to the United Kingdom.
"From my point of view, I don't understand why it's so big. The amount of attention it received, it still shocks me," NewsLink@9 news director John Pinnick said.
Collins has consistently declined interviews of any kind since the incident.
"Some people would choose to make the most out of their 15 minutes, but Brian chose not to, and I respect that," Department of Telecommunications Chairwoman Nancy Carlson said.
Telecommunications instructor Phil Bremen said the story did not warrant such attention.
"It's not that big of a story," Bremen said. "It's just not that big of a deal."
The attention will probably not last long, though, Carlson said.
"This will be yesterday's news as soon as some other video takes over," Carlson said. "Some other victim of people's ridicule [will come along]. Ball State's T-Comm department broadcasts three live television shows, and we welcome freshmen on all three. So you're going to have mistakes, and they're going to be funny."
Professional media personalities have been lampooned for their efforts long before the Internet existed.
"Blooper shows have been around for a long time. That's not new. What's new is how fast it spread," Carlson said.
Julie Bisbee, a 2000 graduate of the Ball State journalism department, is a business writer at the Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. She contacted the Daily News when she heard a local sports radio personality poke fun at Collins' mishap.
"I feel bad for him because he's obviously struggling to get through it. People know Ball State out here because of David Letterman. I'm sure he made a few mistakes in his career as well," Bisbee said.
The phrase "And boom goes the dynamite" has been showing up in small doses in popular culture ever since the video clip landed on the Internet. ESPN SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt has even copped the line during some of his highlight segments.
"It has cult status at this point," Van Pelt said. "Everyone I know that's in the business [has seen the video clip]."
Van Pelt, after hearing about the circumstances leading up to the video clip being posted on the Internet, said he'll no longer use the line on his broadcasts.
"Everbody has fun on the show doing their own thing, but I'm not going to do it anymore, because if this guy is the punchline, I feel bad."
The SportsCenter personality also offered his advice to Collins.
"When something happens like that, the worst thing you can do is pretend it isn't happening. Then you're the only one who isn't in on the joke.
"Anyone that has tried to do TV has had a moment where it all goes wrong."
Both Bremen and Carlson said this incident will probably not have a lasting effect on Collins' would-be career.
"People make mistakes all the time, all the way from the bottom rungs of the industry to the top," Bremen said. "It's on the Internet. That's the only thing that makes it different."
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