DIRECTV Technical Issues Leave Customers Unable To Watch Super Bowl Finish
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch knew he was witnessing something historic in Super Bowl 51 until suddenly he wasn't witnessing it at all.
"Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch the history being made because I wasn't able to see the end of the game," he said.
THANK YOU @DIRECTV @FOXTV . Missed the ending of one of the best games in Super Bowl History. WOW! pic.twitter.com/jG8zBOvpqW
— Charlie Batch (@CharlieBatch16) February 6, 2017
Charlie Batch is a DIRECTV customer and as the Patriots entered the red zone on the game tying drive, the viewing issues began.
"The screen was flickering," Batch said, "And it was in for one minute, the audio still stayed the same, but the screen was going in and it was going out."
They were having the same frustration at the Blawnox Athletic Club.
"It would come in, it would go away again, and you'd say oh is it good this time and it wasn't any good," Ray Hughes said. Hughes said when the video went out completely just before the game tying two point conversion folks started leaving in search of somewhere to see the end of the game.
In a statement to KDKA, DIRECTV said:
"Last night the broadcast feed provided to us by Fox Pittsburgh failed at 10:14pm ET. Fox Pittsburgh fixed the issue and service was restored to our satellite customers in Pittsburgh roughly a half hour later."
Fox 53 responded with this statement on Facebook and Twitter:
"DIRECTV subscribers – We are aware that you encountered reception problems during Super Bowl LI. We are truly sorry that this happened. Our engineering team was on the phone with Direct TV engineers to resolve the problem right away in an effort to resolve the issue. On the Fox 53 end, our over-the-air, cable, FiOS, and Dish Network signals were at 100% - which leads us to believe the problem was on the DirecTV show end. We are working with DirecTV to ensure that they do not have issues receiving our signal.
That prompted this from DIRECTV:
"We want to let our customers know that we too were disappointed that the signal provided by WPGH (FOX 53) failed at a most inopportune time Sunday night. The outage was due to a failure of equipment managed by FOX 53, located on their premises. This equipment is not owned or managed by DIRECTV. The signal was restored only after engineers at FOX 53 reset the equipment at their facility."
Both Fox 53 and Direct TV have been getting an ear full throughout the day from subscribers, including some that want some form of compensation from Direct TV.
But according to TV Predictions, DIRECTV subscribers in several cities including, Tucson, Phoenix, and Pittsburgh reported problems.
DIRECTV's website shows more than 1,300 outage reports during the game last night.
