A Little Olympics Snafu Down In The Control Room. Push The Button, Frank

One of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 lines came during the movie City on Fire, when, as a woman is gong into labor, Crow T. Robot yells: "Get a catcher's mitt!" It's hard to believe that it's been eight years since MST3K was canceled on the SciFi channel; but for about four hours during the Olympics, it was back. Kind of. Yep, that's the Mystery Science Theater 3000 silhouette above, and by the looks of it, it's a Mike episode (I prefer Joel, but that's me). The characters were superimposed over a high-definition broadcast of the Olympics for about four hours on Aug. 16 by KTVH, NBC's affiliate in parts of Montana. Yes, this story is kind of old. But it needs to be addressed. In other words, as Crow would say: "Bite me!" Anyone not familiar with MST3K? Here's the poop. Anyway, the Olympics would have been much better if they had included riffs from the bottom of the screen, plus a couple of host segments with Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. Imagine the comedy gold that could have been mined from Bob Costas alone. Alas, the silhouette shown on the Olympic broadcast here was static; no wisecracks from Mike and the 'bots. It definitely would have helped during racewalking.

Beartooth’s Curtis Grevenitz said the display was the result of second-hand equipment the station was using for the first time. When the FlexiCoder for high definition was turned on, the characters popped up, Grevenitz said. As soon as the station realized what was happening, an engineer was called to remove the software causing the problem from the system to ensure the phenomena would not repeat, he said.

I blame the nanites. We miss you, MST3K. In addition to being hilarious, you were also way ahead of your time. From the movie Mad Monster: Prof. Blaine: "Mingling the blood of man and beast is downright sacrilege!" Joel: "Tell that to the NFL!" Bloggers Abuzz Over Olympics Broadcast On NBC Affiliate [Helena Independent Record] Olympics Watch: Where The MST3K Is A Race [Vanity Fair]