ESPN was forced to abandon ‘SportsCenter’ this Friday morning due to a significant inconvenience.
A major Microsoft outage left airlines, banking systems, and medical sectors around the world in shambles, with ESPN one of the broadcasters impacted by the mishap.
The Worldwide Leader in Sports was unable to air ‘SportsCenter,’ replacing it with a video feed of ESPN Radio’s ‘Unsportsmanlike’ with Freddie Coleman and Courtney Cronin.
“A Microsoft outage happened about one o’clock in the morning Eastern Time, and Courtney, all hell has broken loose,” Coleman told viewers.
“I thought I was the only one struggling this morning when I woke up … and was like struggling to put my eyelashes on,” Cronin joked, claiming to have had the “worst morning ever.”
‘SportsCenter’ Wasn’t The Only ESPN Show Affected By The Outage
Anchor Gary Striewski made light of the situation by sharing a video of him and Randy Scott walking into work this morning.
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“Good morning, America. Do you have internet? Stop bragging about it. We don’t either at Bristol HQ,” he said.
He responded to Cronin’s tweet pertaining to the schedule change with a photo of himself and Scott on the couch.
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“Everyone stop freaking out. Scott is on hold with Microsoft customer support. He’s got it under control,” he joked in another post showing Scott speaking on his phone.
The outage also affected ‘Get Up’, as the show came on without its graphics or B-roll, which meant the hosts had to use a whiteboard.
Meanwhile, George Kurtz, the president and CEO of CrowdStrike cybersecurity firm, has linked the outage to a “defect” found in a Microsoft update. He also confirmed it wasn’t an attack, as Cronin suggested.
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