North Carolina beat Kentucky in thrilling fashion to reach the Final Four on Sunday. UNC’s Luke Maye hit the game-winning jumper with just 0.3 seconds on the clock for the 75-73 win in a game that captivated everyone who saw it.
Unless you live in Columbus, Ohio of course.
Instead of seeing an ending for the ages that will go down in NCAA Tournament lore, viewers missed it because of a weather report break-in to live coverage thanks to a tornado warning in Franklin County.
What made matters worse was that the CBS affiliate in Columbus, 10TV, was having technical difficulties in their studio so the only thing viewers saw was a black screen as NCAA Tournament history was being made.
For those curious followers outside Columbus, how the final seconds of North Carolina-Kentucky went down here during tornado warning pic.twitter.com/KqI5Kts229
— Doug Lesmerises (@DougLesmerises) March 26, 2017
Shout-out to @10TV for cutting into the end of the game with a black screen. I sure hope nothing crazy happened! pic.twitter.com/CGTGpqtenj
— Mark Titus (@clubtrillion) March 26, 2017
@10TV when you break in on a 3 point elite 8 #marchmadness and don't even have video pic.twitter.com/dgpiQGQlmo
— Bwill614 (@BWill614) March 26, 2017
10TV only cut back to the tournament action just in time to see… the handshake line. Eep. As you can imagine there was some serious venting on social media about not just the decision to take fans away from the final seconds, but the fact that all viewers saw was a black screen. 10TV might not want to check their mentions for a while.
Complete clown show, A lone voice in the dark rambling about hypotheticals while we miss an epic ending. thanks
— Ti ❌Byrd (@MEATBAT24) March 26, 2017
@10TV you really just took 10 minutes to give a tornado warning during march madness. Idiots
— Ben Rubel (@b_rubes09) March 26, 2017
they didn't even have video. They could have just interrupted the audio and left the game video on. UNBELIEVABLE
— Ty Alexander (@tydean19) March 26, 2017
Shout out @10TV for cutting to a picture-less weatherman while we all missed the end of that exciting final 4 game.
— Premal Bhatt (@prem_brulee) March 26, 2017
What an Elite game. And we missed it. Your weather guy talked thru final 30 secs with a BLACK picture. Well done. @10TV
— John Lamprinakos (@JohnLamprinako1) March 26, 2017
suing y'all for emotional damages
— m̈̋ͤ̿͐ͨ y̌ͮ͠ ̨l҉ ͬ̅e͛̽̀ ͂s̨ͫ͆ ͧ̍̏̂ͩͨ͌ (@mylesdonohue) March 26, 2017
I am done watching @10TV to start my mornings off because of this NCAA Tournament black out.
— Water Guy. (@Waterguy4489) March 26, 2017
https://twitter.com/tjessberger/status/846142822843633670
@10tv like it was already scrolling across the screen and you said it hadn't touched down anything else is irrelevant. I hate the news
— Bryce Fitch (@bfitch7) March 26, 2017
You are dead to me WBNS pic.twitter.com/EwzdI1LiwK
— Kevin Noon (@Kevin_Noon) March 26, 2017
There are 20 different ways they could have approached this. They did not choose any of those 20.
— Kevin Noon (@Kevin_Noon) March 26, 2017
10TV will air the last two minutes of the North Carolina vs. Kentucky game at 8:00 p.m.
— 10TV (@10TV) March 26, 2017
A ticker was already scrolling at the top of the screen telling viewers the details so the argument could be made that the network could have waited just a couple minutes to break in with local weather updates. At the very least, they could have returned to the UNC-UK game until they had more than a disembodied weatherman voice. Is picture-in-picture never an option in these situations either???
As frustrating as this might be for sports fans, local news people defend breaking in to live coverage, no matter how important the game or event is, to offer weather coverage if there’s potential for a serious storm. That’s understandable. But the timing and execution of what happened in Columbus could not have been worse.
