Biden Looking For Livestream Help After Months Of Glitches

by Naomi Lim, Political Reporter

Joe Biden’s team is scouting for a livestream executive producer after being plagued by technical difficulties for months.

“They’ll be in charge of taking our campaign’s strategic goals and turning it into live programming, while working with our production teams to ensure our productions run smoothly and error-free,” an ad posted Wednesday states.

The Biden camp has struggled to move online because of the COVID-19 outbreak. His first virtual rally last month, for instance, featured long periods of a blank screen, stilted images, garbled audio, and guests who didn’t realize they were on camera.

“Did they introduce me? Am I on?” Biden himself asked.

Earlier in March, Biden’s team apologized after his first digital town hall similarly faltered.

“Tonight, you tuned in to our first ever virtual town hall. And unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties. That’s our bad,” his campaign said.

While Biden is slowly returning to the physical trail, large-scale events, such as the Democratic National Convention, are likely to depend on virtual components amid the continuing pandemic.

Biden’s boost in online muscle coincides with a heavy investment in social media. His camp has spent $5 million on Facebook ads since the start of June, including $1.6 million last Thursday, pushing his message about police brutality and racial injustice after George Floyd’s death. The strategy switch-up added 1.2 million people to his email database, according to the New York Times.

In comparison, Biden doled out $4.43 million on Facebook ads between his launch last April and the eve of the South Carolina primary on Feb. 29.