The revamped Cosmosdebuted on Fox Sunday night, and pulled in roughly 8.5 million viewers across ten networks, an impressive feat for a prime-time show about science.
According to Raw Story, one Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City edited 15 seconds from Sunday’s broadcast, during which Cosmos’ host, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, discusses human evolution. Here’s part of what they cut out:
“Three and a half million years ago, our ancestors — yours and mine — left these traces. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.”
Viewer Adam Bates caught the edit, and uploaded the version to YouTube. It cuts off very abruptly at the beginning of Tyson’s speech, and segues not to breaking news, but to a preview of a segment about a teen bow-hunting phenom.
Here’s the original, via Raw Story:
Sure, this could have been an accident, but the timing seems too perfect. And Oklahoma’s had its share of religious facepalms lately.
Screengrab via Fox/YouTube