Pyeongchang or P.F. Chang?! News Station Says it Can Fully Explain its Hilarious Goof


It was a major facepalm moment for Chicago's WLS-Ch.7 — but there's a perfectly good reason for it...

By Alesandra Dubin

If you were watching local news in Chicago yesterday, you may have seen a mistaken graphic on the screen behind the anchor desk that made you spit out your coffee... before spilling it all over yourself as you tried to grab your phone for a real-time screen shot. Your eyes didn't deceive: What you saw was WLS-Ch.7 run a graphic related to the Olympic games that read “P.F. Chang 2018" when you might have expected it to read instead "Pyeongchang 2018."

To clarify, Pyeongchang is a place more than 100 miles southeast of Seoul, South Korea where the games are being held. Separately, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is an American-based, pan-Asian-style chain restaurant sometimes located in malls, where servers ask you if you want their help mixing some sauces tableside to your desired level of spiciness.

And you know corporate had to get in on the whole thing with a good-natured tweet (which might have also accurately read, "Hey, thanks for the viral story that generated lots of free publicity for us!"):

Not at all similar in concept, Pyeongchang and P.F. Chang seem also not similar enough in spelling to have allowed this to happen naturally. So seriously — what the actual F did happen there?

Jayme Nicholas, a spokesperson for the Chicago ABC affiliate, told Inc. the following explanation cited in The Chicago Tribune: The graphic was actually created on purpose, but it was meant as part of a “satirical piece” created by sports anchor Mark Giangreco that encouraged viewers to dream up their own imaginary sport.

But instead, weekend anchor Mark Rivera had the misfortune of reporting straight Olympics news in front of it.

Oops. Mistakes happen. We're only glad this one didn't happen to us.

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