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Talk about terrible timing.
On Super Bowl Sunday, some Time Warner Cable customers in the Los Angeles area were unable to watch the year’s most watched football game, as well as the halftime show with Bruno Mars and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, due to “an issue” with the local Fox feed.
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The interruption came at approximately 4:45 p.m. PT/7:45 p.m. ET during a commercial break in the second quarter of the Seattle Seahawks-Denver Broncos matchup, just before halftime. The screen froze in the middle of the ad, with some screens remaining black for a significant period of time.
@TWC_SoCal LA Customers: We’re investigating an issue w/KTTV (FoxSD) feed. FoxHD appears to be OK. We’re working to resolve ASAP. ^KT
— TWC Help (@TWC_Help) February 3, 2014
The Southern California Fox feed returned roughly an hour later, at approximately 5:56 p.m. PT/8:56 p.m. ET, when the game was in the middle of the third quarter.
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“We have resolved a technical issue with the SD signal and apologize for the inconvenience to our customers,” a Time Warner Cable spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
Customers flooded Twitter with angry responses to the unexpected technical glitch, with the problem affecting the standard-definition feed, though not the high-definition channel. Customer service lines were also dealing with an unusually high volume of calls due to the regional problem.
However, Fox’s Spanish-language sister network, Fox Deportes, was broadcasting the game without issue.
Following the Southern California blackout, Time Warner Cable’s star-studded Super Bowl ad, featuring celebrities such as Diddy, Drake, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Jimmy Fallon, the Duck Dynasty stars, Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin, aired at least twice.
Email: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
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