On Monday evening, PBS surprised some eagle-eyed viewers of the annual Washington, D.C. fireworks show on the National Mall who noticed some of the footage being played on “A Capitol Fourth” seemed… off.
In certain shots, the evening sky was clear. But on the fourth of July in D.C., low-hanging clouds obscured most of the sky (and swallowed up some of the pyrotechnics). Further, the Capitol building is currently swathed in scaffolding — which were seemingly absent in some of the aired shots.
An official Twitter account for the programming, @July4thPBS, quickly admitted that their feed of the fireworks was actually a mashup. “We showed a combination of the best fireworks from this year and previous years,” a Tweet read. “It was the patriotic thing to do.”
Viewers, though, weren’t so quick to agree with the “patriotic” assessment of the situation, calling out the network on Facebook and Twitter.
Fireworks were only part of the programming: singers like Gavin DeGraw, Smokey Robinson, and Cassadee Pope also performed live for the holiday special.
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