In Oklahoma, you don’t even have to say the word “evolution” to have part of your science TV program cut out in an apparent editing error.
A keen viewer noticed that when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new show “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” premiered Sunday night, Oklahoma City Fox affiliate KOKH played a local news promo over about 15 seconds of the program’s segment on evolution.
“We are newcomers to the Cosmos,” Tyson said. “Our own story only begins on the last night of the cosmic year. It’s 9:45 …”
That’s where the evening news promo cut in. According to a clip of the segment that was skipped, Tyson went on to say this:
“… on New Year’s Eve. Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors, yours and mine, left these traces. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.”
KOKH tweeted an apology Wednesday for playing the promo over a portion of the program and vaguely blamed it on an “operator error:”
Sunday, during @COSMOSonTV, a local news promo was aired over a portion of COSMOS content. This was an operator error & we regret the error.
— KOKH FOX 25 (@OKCFOX) March 12, 2014
(h/t Gawker)
