Sunday night, Steve Harvey made history when he mistakenly read the card wrong at the 2015 Miss Universe pageant and announced that runner-up Miss Colombia won the competition on live TV when, in reality, Miss Philippines was the real winner. While Harvey eventually did realize and own up to his mistake, it was not until they had already placed the crown on Miss Colombia's head, and this caused for an extremely awkward moment as he apologized and they had to take the crown off her head to give it to Miss Philippines. Harvey completely took the blame for this epic mistake, claiming that he had just misread the card, but it turns out a lot more may have gone into this misreading than we originally thought.
While the "Family Feud" host claims he made an "honest mistake" by misreading the cue card, he might not have known exactly what he should have been doing because he, apparently, was not there for the show's full final run-through and missed the most crucial part of rehearsal.
"Steve went to the beginning of rehearsals, but missed the last hour, at least," a source told the New York Daily News. "He did not practice the ending."
Even though Harvey fully took the blame on television and Twitter, in a behind-the-scenes Snapchat post, which has since been deleted, he said the teleprompter fed him the wrong name. However, the source explained that the teleprompter does not reveal the winner's name because "they don't want the girls to see it."
As if the historic live TV mistake wasn't bad enough, when Harvey took to Twitter to once again apologize, he misspelled both Colombia and Philippines, writing "Miss Philippians" and "Miss Columbia," according to Hollywood Life. Once he realized his spelling errors, he quickly deleted the tweets and sent out new ones. "I'd like to apologize wholeheartedly to Miss Colombia & Miss Philippines for my huge mistake. I feel terrible," he wrote. He then added: "Secondly, I'd like to apologize to the viewers at that I disappointed as well Again it was an honest mistake. I don't want to take away from this amazing night and pageant. As well as the wonderful contestants. They were all amazing."
As such a well-loved host with a successful career, the debacle has people wondering if all of this will have a negative impact on his future in the business. Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5WPR, believes he will hurt in the long-run because of it.
"The brand which will suffer the most from Steve Harvey's gaffe at the Miss Universe contest is Steve Harvey," Torossian told Fox News. "What a terrible mistake."
But not everyone feels the same way. Alex Shankman, head of alternative programming and digital media at Abrams Artists Agency, doesn't think his career will be affected too much.
"While Steve Harvey's mistake onstage is certainly going to garner a huge storm of negative attention in the press and on social media in short term, in the long-run it will be forgotten," explained Shankman to Fox News. "A plethora of hosts and TV personalities have made errors while broadcasting live, many that could be considered worse than this situation, but time is the blunder's best friend. Steve Harvey is a talented guy and this certainly won't define his career."
Public relations specialist Mark Goldman also agrees with Shankman. "Harvey is one of the most recognized faces in America with a clean public image," he said. "He's family and corporate friendly. Between already being [an] extremely successful host of his own syndicated TV show and radio show, owning a dating website and [owning] his very own tie collection, Steve Harvey is a powerful brand. We all make mistakes and Harvey will have no problem recovering from this one."
A photo posted by Steve Harvey (@iamsteveharveytv) on Dec 20, 2015 at 9:19pm PST
