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:
There is a mob with torches and clubs forming outside the WPSD TV offices about now.
— Roger Lipe (@SalukiChaplain) February 2, 2015
https://twitter.com/DStuck98/status/562067674633469952
WPSD TV apparently can't get things together to show the entire Super Bowl. Are you freaking kidding me ?#ClownShow #AmateurHour
— Erik Sean (@Erik_Sean) February 2, 2015
Anybody else having trouble with WPSD right now? Didn't want to watch the Super Bowl anyways!! #Unreal
— Tyler Brockman (@Bookman45) February 2, 2015
WPSD failing on big stage, Super Bowl blackouts
— The Greg Dunker Show (@GregDunkerShow) February 2, 2015
During the outage, WPSD encouraged viewers to go online to watch the Big Game:
We know some of you are having issue watching the game. We are working on it. You can watch the game here: http://t.co/Pgj6ScSMlG #WPSD
— WPSD Local 6 (@WPSDLocal6) February 2, 2015
And later, WPSD added this statement:
The outage occurred at the worst possible time for viewers. Certainly a house fire could not be helped, but overall, the last thing viewers want to hear is “We are working on it.”