‘Late Late Show’ Exec Weighs in on ‘Love Is Blind’ Livestream Disaster

The Love Is Blind is still the talk of the town, even when it’s been almost two weeks since it happened, and now a Late Late Show exec is weighing in on the behind-the-scenes drama. Aside from the disaster that occurred on-screen, as fans want to replace hosts Nick and Vanessa Lachey, there was a lot that happened behind the camera as well, most notably with the massive delay. Despite advertising when the event would start, it took over an hour for the reunion to air and was only live to those at a viewing party in LA. 

The reason for the delay is likely that Netflix wasn’t anticipating how many people would watch the special, but they were still very appropriately disappointed. While a guest on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Late Late Show exec Ben Winston, who has also produced the Grammys and other live awards shows, discussed what happened with the delay and sympathized with the team at Netflix because it probably wasn’t easy.

“I think when you’re building something for a one-off, I think it’s different,” explained Winston. “I can’t speak to what happened that night. I think live telly is difficult. I don’t think it should make too much of a difference streaming, but I am not technologically sound enough to advise you on that, on what happened there. But I think that things can go wrong on live; we’ve seen that before. I think it was terribly unfortunate. I felt devastated for that production team for putting in all the work. But I think, I hope streamers keep taking that risk and going for live because live is exciting.”

Things are constantly changing, and technology is always evolving, so it’s only just a matter of time before the change starts to take over, as Winston says, “I think we’ve always viewed streamers in the way we view box sets and DVDs and I think that that will start to change as the Chris Rocks and the Disneys and the Eltons and all those events start happening and sports and our mentality will change, and the new generation’s mentality will change even more.”

Since Love Is Blind Season 5 is happening, there’s no telling if Netflix will try the live reunion again or go back to it being previously recorded. There’s also the question of whether or not the Lacheys will continue hosting since so many fans have their ideas of new hosts, but it’s still some time away. If anything, Netflix has a lot of time to figure out how to do it again if they want to, and now that they know what to expect, hopefully, it’ll be better.