Flashback: Debate glitch took 27 minutes to fix in 1976

By Steven Nelson

Published June 27, 2019 3:04pm ET

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Flashback: Debate glitch took 27 minutes to fix in 1976 — In this Sept. 23, 1976, file photo President Gerald Ford speaks during the first of three televised presidential debates with Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater. | (AP)

The audio glitch at the first 2020 Democratic primary debate recalled a more serious calamity in 1976, when a nationally broadcast forum went silent for a painstaking 27 minutes.

“They were talking and all the sudden they quit,” a TV journalist exclaimed, as networks scrambled to fill air time with then-President Gerald Ford and future President Jimmy Carter standing behind podiums in Philadelphia.

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2020 Elections Debates Democratic Party Jimmy Carter MSNBC NBC Presidents