When L.A. TV reporter Serene Branson launched into a string of unintelligible gibberish during the Grammys on Sunday night, viewers quickly leapt into action, uploading the thing all over the Web and tweeting about the bizarre spectacle. The video went viral at a mind-spinning rate. And then people began to worry. Perhaps the odd flub was something more than just a tongue-tied reporter. People started bandying about the term “stroke” a lot.
After several days of speculation, Branson
addressed the video on her station, KCBS. The reporter had been checked out by doctors at the UCLA Medical Center, earlier in the week. They did a brain scan and blood work, ruling out the possibility of a stroke.
During the interview, Branson revealed that she had started to get a headache prior to event. “At around 10:00 that night I was sitting in the live truck with my field producer and the photographer and I was starting to look at some of my notes,” Branson explained. “I started to think, the words on the page are blurry and I could notice that my thoughts were not forming the way they normally do.”
And then she went on air. “As soon as I opened my mouth I knew something was wrong,” she continued.
The incident, it turns out, was actually the result of a migraine. Branson has suffered from them since she was a child, but, she told doctors, this is the first time she had one of this magnitude.
