While there are lot of questions on if or how the Pac-12 will exist in the fall of 2024 (the conference only has two schools currently set to be there at that time, Oregon State and Washington State), there’s still important football action there at the moment. And that includes games on the Pac-12 Network (or Networks; it remains the unusual combination of one national feed and six regional feeds that caused some of its carriage issues, but for football purposes, the national feed is generally the relevant one and is generally what people are talking about), which is quite likely to go away as of the fall of 2024.
But Pac-12 Network is still quite important for the moment. And there were four games there Saturday, including the No. 13 Washington State Cougars at the UCLA Bruins. And that game drew lots of attention. And many people reported experiencing technical difficulties trying to watch it:
The PAC-12 Network just went out during the biggest game in the conference this weekend.
— Cameron Salerno (@cameronsalerno1) October 7, 2023
https://twitter.com/bravegrapes/status/1710751524408963173
Only the pac 12 network would cut out and go all black for 5 minutes
— Dave (@BringOutDaGongs) October 7, 2023
Sun spots on PAC 12 Network are affecting the satellite signal from the network. UCLA Bruins football @Pac12Network @tedjrobinson
— MikeyinNM (@MikeyinNm) October 7, 2023
PAC-12 network not working is perfectly on brand
— Pat Benson (@Pat_Benson_Jr) October 7, 2023
It’s not clear how widespread this outage was, or which providers were affected by it. Awful Announcing went back through this timespan on Clippit and didn’t see a prolonged outage. But there certainly were a lot of people who tweeted about hitting one here.
As noted by one commentator there, the sun’s location is disrupting many satellite signals at the moment. And that led to technical issues for many networks Saturday. So this was far from just a P12N issue. But the issue for them is notable considering the ongoing discussions around the Pac-12, its broadcast situation, and Washington State in particular. An outage here may not actually be associated with any of those topics, but the network involved here meant that this got a lot of talk.
[Cameron Salerno on Twitter]
