Once again Chris Brown and Rihanna find themselves in the middle of a controversy stemming from a technical malfunction with the Coke Viewer’s Choice Award at the BET awards last week; only this time neither party was at fault.
The history between Chris Brown and Rihanna is well-known: Brown plead guilty and was convicted in an assault case involving his ex-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. But this weekend’s controversy was of a different kind than their past troubles.
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Tiffany Green, winner of the “Your World, Our World Contest” won the honor to present the Coke Viewers’ Choice Award at this year’s BET Awards, which celebrates African Americans and other minorities in music. This year’s Viewer’s Choice award was supposed to be announced on the new HTC EVO 4G Tablet, which was supposed to be a pretty creative product placement. And it would have been if it had worked. Green came out on stage with Terrence and Rosci (cohosts of the BET show ’106 & Park’) to present the award. Green had the tablet in hand and was doing great reading her lines, up until it came time to read the winner. Green looked at the tablet and then up at the teleprompter with what has been described as a ‘deer in headlights’ look.
The tablet said Chris Brown, but the teleprompter said the winner was Rihanna.
Green announced the winner as Chris Brown, but immediately corrected herself and apologized and then said the winner was in fact Rihanna for the song “What’s My Name?” Terrence then corrected poor confused Tiffany Green and told the audience that the winner was actually Drake, the featured artist in the supposed winning video. Drake, who incidentally wasn’t named on either tablet or teleprompter, accepted the award admitting it was an “awkward” moment.
Later on awards show attendees got an extra treat; it turns out the tablet had been right after all.
At the end of the show, announcers brought Chris Brown back up on stage, and announced that he was the correct winner of the Coke Viewers’ Choice Award. The BET host Kevin Hart blamed the whole thing on human error on the part of the BET producers.
Tiffany Green the winner of the “Your World, Our World Contest,” presenting the Coca-Cola Viewers’ Choice Award at the BET Awards Show.
After going back stage, Tiffany Green tweeted: “Bawling backstage,They totally f****d me up. … The tablet f****n said CHRIS BROWN….the TELEPROMPTER said Rihanna. What the F**K?????? Goin home.”
Programming Executive, Stephen Hill admitted to the error. He tweeted that the human error was his fault, and apologized to those that were affected by his mistake.He certainly did keep viewers and announcers on their toes Saturday night, not to mention causing emotional trauma to Tiffany Green and adding more potential fuel to the fire between Chris Brown and Rihanna.
This guest post is by Edwin Daniels who blogs at USdish. You can also follow him on Twitter: @Edandish.