NYC trivia host defending Steve Harvey

It was the gaffe heard around the world. This past Sunday at the Miss Universe 2015 competition, as the entire world watched on live television, seasoned entertainer, game show host and event emcee Steve Harvey did the unthinkable: he announced the wrong winner.

Miss Colombia was announced as the new Miss Universe, joyfully accepting the coveted tiara, sash and bouquet of flowers that she – and everyone else – thought that she had rightfully won. However, mere moments into the celebration, Mr. Harvey sheepishly announced that there had actually been an error: it wasn’t Miss Colombia who had won, but actually Miss Philippines. The result was immediate confusion and chaos – not to mention awkwardness – as the contestants, live audience, and viewers at home alike attempted to make sense of what they were witnessing.

Days later, it’s still all anyone is talking about – how cruel it was for Miss Colombia to be briefly crowned and then demoted, and how bizarre the aftermath has been. But more than anything, people are talking about the host, and how he could have possibly messed up as big as he did.

As a professional corporate event entertainer in New York City, I try to empathize with poor Mr. Harvey. My specialty as a professional trivia host for company events means that for the better part of the past decade, I have gone up in front of hundreds of audiences large and small to run competitive game nights and contests. Like a pageant, with these types of functions there is a significant amount of buildup over the course of the evening: anticipation, momentum, and pent-up energy, all culminating in the big, big reveal at the end: who won?

In this case, Steve’s gaffe couldn’t have come at a worse time. He didn’t read the wrong name during the individual competitions, nor during one of the earlier elimination rounds, but rather during the one time it mattered: the actual crowning itself, the moment EVERYONE was waiting for, and when the stakes couldn’t be higher. I have read in subsequent media reports that the actual card he was holding with the results wasn’t in the easiest to read format, and I think we can all agree that being on live TV for an event being telecast globally would stress any of us out, even a veteran like Steve. But alas, the flub still happened, and now the winner, the runner-up and the pageant itself are paying the price for it.

While I obviously haven’t been in the exact same situation, given my unique career I have indeed experienced similar occasions – after all, as the emcee it is my job to announce the winning team at the end of a quiz night. Between my years as a pub quiz host in Manhattan and my business running private trivia events in NYC, I can surely think back to a few times where I screwed up royally during the climax of the action – either I read out the scores wrong, or did my math wrong, or did some other stupid thing which otherwise ruined the Big Moment for everyone in attendance, who had been waiting with bated breath (now that I think about it more, I can actually recall an instance during one of our public events at The Bell House hosted by NY1 morning news anchor/former VH1 The World Series of Pop Culture host Pat Kiernan, when I handed Pat the finally tally onstage in front of 300 people, but had accidentally hidden one of the rows on the Excel spreadsheet – thus obscuring the actual winning team. Pat’s fortunately a complete pro, and handled it with his usual aplomb – but the mistake was mine, and I’m sure several people felt somewhat slighted by it).

Poor Steve Harvey. I can only imagine how horrible he felt afterwards, sitting alone in his dressing room knowing that his innocent mistake had led to such a disastrous outcome – and in such public fashion, no less. Was the note card he was handed unnecessarily confusing, resulting in the worst-possible outcome? Perhaps. Should he have double-checked the note card before making his announcement, if he wasn’t sure? Of course. But in my experience, I have to say that with high-pressure competitive events such as this, these things do in fact sometimes happen. Can they occur during the culmination of such a high-profile medium as Miss Universe? While rare, it’s not impossible, as we can all now attest – my feeling is that this was just a perfect storm of bad card printing, bad timing, and good old-fashioned bad luck.

Don’t be too hard on Steve. Yes, it was funny to watch for the rest of us, and I’m as guilty as anyone of making a joke or two at his expense – however, I can assure you that however bad the stuff is you’ve heard or read about this incident over the past few days is, he’s beating himself up 100 times worse.

And hey – at least we got a great pop culture trivia question out of it!