An ill-timed outage affected NBC affiliate WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids in Michigan on Sunday afternoon. That outage came at the worst possible time if you’re a Michigan sports fan who wanted to watch your Detroit Lions play in the NFC Divisional Round.
The Lions are hosting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after their first playoff win since January 1992. It’s fitting they’re playing the Buccaneers, as the two used to be rivals in the old NFC Central Division. All that aside, though, people, namely Lions fans, desperately wanted to watch the game on Sunday afternoon.
So, an outage certainly would impact their enjoyment and good time. Unfortunately, viewers in much of West Michigan had to deal with a temporary outage on their local NBC affiliate.
Viewers who had WOOD-TV on at around 4:15 p.m. Eastern were watching a commercial. Then, suddenly, the station went black.
Here's what the outage looked like if you were watching WOOD-TV in Michigan. This video is courtesy of the channel in Grand Rapids. pic.twitter.com/daSyBK0iAQ
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 21, 2024
Amanda Porter, a local reporter, had alerted viewers of the outage. Porter also informed them that the game could be temporarily accessed on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Fortunately for all involved, the outage was short-lived. At 4:41 p.m. Eastern, Porter emerged again to say that the outage was over and the game could be reaccessed on their affiliate.
https://twitter.com/ItsAmandaPorter/status/1749185462655181144
But despite it being short-lived, viewers at home were obviously unhappy.
Worst time ever for an outage in West Michigan https://t.co/tm7T1pHu3t
— Jonathan Jesse (@jjesse) January 21, 2024
I don’t have peacock!!!
What the heck is happening!!! https://t.co/I5oZbcXDdG
— Christopher Funaro (@Funaro6) January 21, 2024
Our local NBC affiliate is having an issue, and is reporting that an outage at a hub is leading to signal interruption here. Not that that explanation is helping all the pissy people. Feel bad for anyone in their newsroom today, because I bet they're currently getting INUNDATED.
— Kyle Sparks of Bodyslam.Net (@kyleksparks) January 21, 2024
Are you kidding me @DIRECTV losing the signal of the Lions playoff game in Michigan? And didn’t have an NBC channel in our area for the Lions vs Chiefs game. Do better!
— Tony Costello (@TonyCostello37) January 21, 2024
Fortunately, for all involved, even amid the anger, this was just a temporary outage. A long-term one, with the Lions playing, would have been disastrous.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022