The latest DirecTV sports issue isn’t a carriage dispute, but rather technical difficulties. Throughout Saturday, many subscribers to the service tweeted that numerous channels (including ESPN, NBCSN, and Fox Sports 1) displayed just jumbles of pixels rather than the proper picture:
https://twitter.com/johnehoover/status/1190717319074516993
https://twitter.com/stephqjustified/status/1190741110869626881
@DIRECTV what's going on?? Multiple channels on my boxes throughout the house pic.twitter.com/qAhNQuGzfG
— Level 31 (@ThatDudeBrock69) November 2, 2019
https://twitter.com/BSinger10/status/1190740846964031488
Come on @DIRECTV get this fixed! Trying to watch the K-State game on Fox Sports 1, and this is the horrible picture we are getting. Been on hold with you for over 20 minutes and no one has answered yet. pic.twitter.com/l0utcu66m5
— Coach Orr (@coach_orr) November 2, 2019
https://twitter.com/iamnottense/status/1190740932238422016
https://twitter.com/sundevilpatrick/status/1190741216339431424
Twitter user Jon Bristow said this was about channels on a specific DirecTV satellite, and that SD versions of those channels (on a different satellite) were still working:
it is EVERY channel on satellite Directv-14. Since there is more than 1 hd satellite you will still see some hd channels working. There are versions of every channel still working if you switch to sd as they are on a different satellite.
— jon bristow (@jondbrist) November 2, 2019
Tim Burke backed up that it is satellite 14:
Directv-14 at 99.2°W is broken and has been all day. Pretty bad situation! https://t.co/8K2wiAKExc
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) November 2, 2019
And DirecTV parent AT&T’s help Twitter account also offered the switch-to-SD advice:
We are aware you may be having trouble watching some HD channels on DIRECTV. Try switching to SD as we work on a fix. We apologize for the inconvenience.
— AT&T Help (@ATTHelp) November 2, 2019
A widespread outage like this would be a rough thing to have happen at any point, but it’s particularly annoying for sports fans to see this happen on a busy sports Saturday. If this is about a satellite, maybe that adds yet more impetus for DirecTV to hurry their transition away from that approach.
[Photo from Brent Singer on Twitter]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.