Got a couple of e-mails from folks who believe — as I suspected — that the story of Tim Robbins getting cut off the air on The Today Show might not be all it's cracked up to be. Here's Paul Harris…
It's probably something a lot less devious. NBC has a hard cutaway to local stations at :25 and :55 every hour of Today. They break the network at that point so affiliates can do local commercials and news inserts. These are never preempted unless the full network is in preemption mode (as on the morning of 9/11, for instance) when they don't even break for commercials because of continuous coverage of a major event. So the more likely reason is that someone — in the booth, on the floor, or in Lauer's ear — got the timing wrong, or Lauer ignored the cutaway signals because he was so caught up in what Robbins was saying.
Makes sense, but Standard Broadcasting Procedure would then be for the host, following the break, to say something like, "Our apologies to Tim Robbins for a technical error that cut him off." On the other hand, we don't know that this wasn't said. I just think it's funny that, intentional or not, Robbins got cut off while he was going after Corporate America on NBC, just like a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Tim Robbins got cut off while he was going after Corporate America on NBC.
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