Viewers in IL, KY and MO miss major portions of Super Bowl XLIX

[mvcg66b3r]

When you’re watching a sporting event that goes down to the wire, the last things you want are power outages, breaking news or technical difficulties. For viewers of WPSD in Paducah, KY which serves Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois and the Missouri Bootheel, they got the latter. The station suffered lengthy outages three times during the second half as well as the postgame and other minor ones throughout the game.

According to a station official, a house fire nearby the transmitter located in Monkeys Eyebrow, KY may have caused the outage, an investigation is ongoing. The Southern Illinoisan reports that the fire may have caused the transmitter to shut itself down in order to prevent a power surge or spike.

Of course, it caused viewers to go to social media to express their outrage at losing the signal:

http://awfulannouncing.com/2015/vie...lix&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

[newsmark]

If what they say is true, it's really unfortunate. I had it happen once in 1981. A car wreck knocked out the power line to the transmitter. (We didn't have a backup generator.)

Fortunately, it wasn't during the Super Bowl. It WAS during Hee Haw. A lot of people were upset and decided to call the station.

Each time, I explained about the accident and the power. Most callers were quite understanding. One man said, "well why don't you announce it so we don't think it's our TV?"

You can't make this stuff up.

Or so I thought.
You can only imagine my surprise when a very similar line popped up in an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati later that year.

 

[frankberry]

It goes right along with ... "We're off the air ... you'd better run a crawl."