Technical Difficulties for Nightly News

All three broadcast networks had access to the two presidential nominees late this afternoon after Sens. McCain and Obama met at the White House. For one broadcast, the so called round-robin interviews may have happened too close to airtime. After airing its John McCain interview, Brian Williams led into the Barack Obama interview. The Obama clip sat frozen for a few seconds, then a slate went up, then the clip aired in fast motion with no audio.

The camera switched back to Williams who said, “All righty. Well, I think we get points for trying. Some valiant efforts there to bring you part of our conversation with Senator Obama. We will rescue it and get it back on the air.”

They did. A few minutes later. But in between, Nightly News aired a portion of Katie Couric‘s interview with Gov. Sarah Palin. Interestingly, that 1-minute 20-second portion of the interview, which TVNewser highlighted in this story earlier today, had not yet run on Couric’s Evening News.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.