KY general manager ‘horrified’ by Emmy crash opening

Posted by Steve Safran on August 28, 2006

The Emmy Awards show started with a short film featuring Conan O’Brien in a plane crash. The skit was meant to parody “Lost,” but it came on the same weekend as the real plane crash that killed 49 people in Kentucky. The GM for WLEX, the NBC affil in Lexington, says showing the opening sketch was “…somewhere between ignorance and incompetence,” adding he was “horrified” when he watched. Tim Gilbert says he would have not aired the show if he had known about the opening. UPDATE: NBC has apologized for any “unintentional pain” the parody may have caused. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the many families who lost loved ones in the plane crash in Kentucky on Sunday,” NBC said in a statement. “In no way would we ever want to make light of this terrible tragedy. The filmed opening during the Emmy telecast meant to spoof some of television’s most well-known scenes. The timing was unfortunate, and we regret any unintentional pain it may have caused.” VIDEO: The sketch is now posted at YouTube.

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Anonymous

Oh my god. Is this guy kidding?

I never even made that connection until just now, and still, I’m completely not offended.

If Kentucky wasn’t freaking land-locked, then Maybe, MAYBE, I could care a little, but that skit was so obviously a parody of Lost, that no one, except those with the thinnest of skin could have possibly construed it in an offensive manner.
Anonymous

I disagree. The Kentucky crash was the FIRST thing I thought of when I saw Conan’s “plane” going down. It made me cringe.

You never know when a plane is going to crash. Maybe they should have taped an alternate open.
http://www.lostremote.com Cory

Imagine your station covering the crash wall-to-wall for much of the weekend, and then the Emmys open up with a plane crash.

I think his anger is justifiable.
Not Offended, but trying

You know, it’s the anniversary of Katrina. And I will be horrified if any television show airs any program that treats rain and wind storms in a lighthearted way.
Dave

Seems like a pretty grey area to me. What’s the determining factor here? Small planes go down very frequently if not nearly every day in America, so obviously the existence of any plane crash is not “it”. How many bodies are we talking about? Does it require saturation cable news coverage before satire of TV shows’ air travel scenes is out of bounds?

And for how long are spoofs off limits? A day? Week?

To satirize a TV show is one thing. To satirize a plane crash is another.

I do sympathize with the station manager’s reaction. But no one was picking on that crash or on the safety of air travel.

By the way — I didn’t see anyone demanding that movie theatres stop showing “Snakes on a Plane”. In fact, the movie still seems to be running in Lexington theatres.
http://involuntaryslacker.blogspot.com Alyssa

I didn’t think about the plane crash either as I watched the Emmys.

However, wasn’t ithe opening sequence filmed before the crash actually happened? Sometimes people are entirrely too sensative.
http://www.water.net Keith

Poor timing. The skit should have been pulled. While I agree the number of fatalities is a factor, the first commercial plane crash on US soil in five years is a BIG story. It was topic #1 for dinner conversation in our home, and many others in our neighborhood. I trust the same was true across the country. NBC has a distinct financial advantage over its primetime competitors in that it can simultaneously air news coverage on one arm and entertainment on the other . And this was not a case where the network had to choose whether or not to pre-empt entertainment for news. It would have been respectful to the 49 families who lost someone in the crash to pull the skit. One of the VPs at 30 Rock should have overruled the west coast chiefs on this one.
http://involuntaryslacker.blogspot.com Alyssa

“first commercial plane crash on US soil in five years” –> what about the plane that crashed into a Queens neighborhood just months after 9/11?
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