Faced with affiliate preemptions over language concerns, CBS Saturday announced that it will stream a rerun of its 9/11 special for one week after its 8-10 p.m. West Coast broadcast Sunday.
CBS affiliates in markets representing approximately 10 percent of the country have chosen to either preempt or delay the special, mostly due to concerns over language primarily used by firefighters on Sept. 11.
“The online streaming of this broadcast will allow viewers in those markets to see the Peabody Award-winning special,” the network said in a statement.
CBS is presenting the special in the same manner that it did in its previous two airings on March 10, 2002, and Sept. 11, 2002.
The broadcast will include several audience warnings in the presentation, and Robert De Niro, who will again serve as host in a newly taped introduction, will also alert viewers to the graphic language.
Filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet and James Hanlon have provided updates through new interviews, which include many of the firefighters featured in the original program. They discuss how their lives, families and the world have changed in the five years since the terrorist attacks.
On Sept. 11, the Naudets and Hanlon were in lower Manhattan shooting a documentary on the Engine 7, Ladder 1 firefighters and captured the only known video of the first plane striking the World Trade Center, as well as 75 minutes from inside the North Tower.
