Time Warner Cable standard-definition customers in southern California lost the signal to Super Bowl XVIII for a little more than an hour on Sunday evening.
The analog signal of Fox's KTTV-TV Channel 11 Los Angeles went dark from 4:59 p.m. (PT) through 6:02 p.m., spanning the end of the second quarter until it was restored midway through the third quarter, according to an MSO spokesman.
Time Warner Cable said that its high-definition signal remained intact throughout the telecast, so most of its subscribers were not impacted by the technical issue that caused the standard-definition service disruption. The spokesman said that “our engineers resolved the issue as quickly as possible, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused our customers.”
According to the spokesman, most Time Warner Cable viewers watch the HD signal. Moreover, because the game was on a broadcast station, many viewers with high-definition televisions with digital tuners would have seen the enhanced signal uninterrupted even if they didn’t have an HD set-top box from the MS0. As such, TWC said there was no way to pinpoint the number of people who were watching the SD signal, when it went out.
