From an email response by the General Manager of WHNT, channel 19, the CBS affiliate covering northern Alabama, which blacked out most of the 60 Minutes segment dealing with the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman and falsely told its viewers that it had “network problems”:
I can certainly understand your reason for being upset with us. Tonight at approximately 6pm, WHNT lost the network feed of 60 Minutes for twelve minutes at the beginning of a segment on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Upon investigation, WHNT learned that the CBS receiver that allows us to receive programming from the CBS Network’s New York feed failed. WHNT engineers responded as quickly as possible to diagnose the problem and were able to restore the feed at 6:12pm. I would like to personally extend my sincere apologies to you both and all of our viewers across the Tennessee Valley. Therefore, we will air the segment in its entirety tonight during the 10pm news.
Again, I hope you’ll accept my apology for the unfortunate timing of our technical problems tonight. If you can’t catch our 10pm News tonight, simply go to www.whnt.com and towards the bottom, click “Watch CBS Shows” then News, then 60 Minutes.
Sincerely,
Stan Pylant, President, General Manager, WHNT-TV, Huntsville, AL
The station did rebroadcast the segment, at 10:20 Central time, after it finished reporting its police blotter and weather. Just late enough on a night before a work day that it could be certain no one would be watching, since their viewers had by that time gone to bed, if they were not viewing the Oscars.
