Live newscasts can get very awkward very quickly if only one person in an ensemble goes off-script. A recent broadcast saw one anchor go off on another anchor for covering his story. The news anchor of the KRON 4 news team in San Francisco dared to speak about the upcoming feature film Space Jam 2, which prompted sports anchor Gary Radnich to air his grievances on-camera. Check it out!
Gary Radnich was clearly not pleased that fellow anchor Catherine Heenan stuck with the teleprompter and intruded on his territory as the sportscaster. The clip is half-funny and half-uncomfortable. It’s almost hard to believe that the interaction actually happened on a news broadcast and not in an awkward sketch on Saturday Night Live.
The escalation of Radnich’s complaint is admittedly pretty funny. He went from mildly offended that his co-worker had touched on sports to implying that Catherine Heenan had slighted his family by talking about Space Jam 2. Radnich did take to Twitter after the clip started circulating to claim that he was only playing at being angry, but Heenan clearly didn’t get the joke. Her attempts to lighten the banter and get the broadcast back on track were pretty obviously genuine. Whether he was playing or not, the tangent didn’t seem to be one that his fellow anchor appreciated.
That said, Catherine Heenan can count herself lucky that her big problem on screen was just a cantankerous co-worker. Other newscasters have gone through everything from car crashes to stabbings to robberies on camera. A few awkward moments about Space Jam 2 must be easy to bear in comparison.
Given that Space Jam 2 is a movie combining a basketball star with cartoon characters, Gary Radnich is probably going to need to get used to sharing the news with other anchors. If the sequel were set to be a documentary about basketball, perhaps he would have a valid point, but anything involving Bugs Bunny is definitely not going to be based in sports reality. If KRON 4 has an entertainment anchor, Space Jam 2 is going to be covered by reporters other than Radnich.
Of course, Gary Radnich might still have a while before he has to share Space Jam 2 coverage on the regular. The movie is still in the very early stages of development, with only LeBron James as the basketball talent signed on to appear. 1996's Space Jam featured a dream team of star athletes including Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Muggsy Bogues, and Shawn Bradley. LeBron James may have been known to carry whole teams on his talent alone, but something tells me the same won’t be true for a feature film.
Only time will tell if the development of Space Jam 2 will add any further complications to newscasts on KRON 4, but it’s probably safe to say that Catherine Heenan might think twice about casual comments about it when Gary Radnich is in the room.
