Detroit Lions outage Detroit Lions wide receiver Josh Reynolds (8) celebrates a touchdown against Tampa Bay Buccaneers with running back Craig Reynolds (13) during the first half of the NFC divisional round at Ford Field in Detroit on Sunday, Jan. 21, 2024.
Local NetworksNBCNFLPeacockBy Chris Novak on

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.

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.

But despite it being short-lived, viewers at home were obviously unhappy.

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.

[Awful Announcing]

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

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