this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025

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[Need Help Verifying] did I just witness a purposeful ABC+NBC(+?) blackout during latenight? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by tubthumper@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Basically, I sat my high ass down to watch OTA TV. I get only two main channels (ABC and NBC) and their affiliates, which share their respective main channel. Turned the TV on at like 10:45 pm CST, zoned out on my phone, looked up around 11:20 (when I started recording) and there was still seemingly not a feed, just a darkish gray picture. Changed channels, sister stations came in fine, showed normal programming. Went back to ABC and then NBC, both the same level of flat gray picture. Not fully black like there was no signal, but a maybe 75-80% dark gray.

If there were weather or atmospheric interference, it's my understanding that all of the channels would drop out or at the very least, struggle to produce a picture simultaneously. This was night and day. A complete (not black) blackout on 13.1 ABC, and perfectly fine on 13.4 True Crime Network and the other handful. Same with 46.1 NBC; it was "out" but all the affiliates work.

Wtf right? This doesn't seem incidental, or accidental.

I genuinely think the networks or some interloper blocked viewers from seeing the late night shows. Why? Maybe the ongoing latenight feud is just a convenient scapegoat and it's particularly because of the absolute slam-dunk job Mamdani did at making Trump docile to him today. The powers that be are strangling each other not to let casual socialism breach the mainstream with Trump's hearty support and don't want those utterly dumbfounding, amazing moments to be lauded by late night hosts and further spread than they already hopefully have been.

Yes, I did record this for 5 minutes and it contains some interesting commentary because, yes, I'm high. I also recorded shortly after the picture returned in a perfect feed of the very last songs of whatever band was playing on Kimmel. This was around 11:34 pm CST.

Did anyone else witness this? And can I send this video to anyone who would care about checking into how limited or widespread it could be? I could attach a short clip if needed, just hesitant about identifying data.

Again, high. But with video evidence.

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[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I live in LA and just checked my TV after reading your post. Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon are all playing as usual (it's 11:45 here). But they're all reruns from earlier this month. That's probably normal on a Friday, just like The Daily Show doesn't even run on Fridays. The networks have hope for you having a social life on Fridays.

So, maybe your local stations did do a blackout, but you're not missing out on Trump blowing Mamdani. Maybe SNL tomorrow would be good for that.

[–] tubthumper@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Thank you for checking! Knowing it was just reruns on the Big Three for those lacking a social life is a certain flavor of relief.

Assuming it was a local "grayout" on the two subchannels coming from different transmitters, could it be a limited testing of the waters for possible public response? OTA watchers would probably report a lack of feed less than someone who subscribes to a wired (cable, internet) service because one assumes OTA has less reliable reception, and it's also free. But in this case, the other subchannels being on air tells me it's not a typical reception issue.

It's easy to handwave this away as an abberation, but it's still disconcerting.

[–] Battle_Masker@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

idk if this is related but my mother's staying with me for Thanksgiving and she came a week early cause she still has some stuff at my place that she needs. Anyways she was watching msnbc on fubo and it just went offline around 5pm EST. only thing on it was a screen saying "we're currently negociating with NBC to get this channel back online," but that was the only channel that had this issue

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

My wife listened to that in her car, I think they are separating because it's been rebranded as MSNOW.

[–] SPRUNT@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Hulu hasn't been recording NBC shows for 3 weeks now.

[–] atx_aquarian@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you saw 13.4 on-air and 13.1 off-air, and if you saw a channel resume material eventually, then it does sound to me like programming went dark while the transmitter was up and that content was, one way or another, missing. I imagine lots of possibilities. It might be interesting to see if anyone else reports on it as an outage.

[–] tubthumper@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

I appreciate your validation that this appears to be a content feed issue and not likely a reception issue. Too many possibilities.

The only addition I have is that the two channels originate from different transmitters as far as I can tell. That adds to how strange it was for both 13.1 and 46.1 being missing content at the same time, while their respective affiliates were fine.

I hope to find public outage or feedback reports for broadcast stations, maybe a pattern is evident somewhere?

[–] CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You're imagining shit.

At worst a mistake was made and the wrong button was pressed. Or a transmitter died.

[–] tubthumper@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On both channels? Coming from different broadcast towers? At the same time?

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How do you know they were different broadcast towers? A lot of transmitters can use the same tower.

[–] tubthumper@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Tl;dr at the bottom (sorry)

That is a good question. Now I genuinely don't know how it works in bigger / more dense metro areas but in gods cuntry anyway the transmitters are often 25+ miles away and don't necessarily contain all the channels one can get. I couldn't find an accurate or updated list of the stations I should get on any of those "free digital tv channel" websites that even list one of mine as a possibility, so it's out there but idk where. There was a GIS from NASA I believe that shows all the various public and private/commercial comms towers and such (I'll see if I can find it again) that had promise, sad allusion unintended, but I couldn't get it to load on my phone and can't look at a desktop so soon in the weekend, lulul.

I also read something about close frequency signals having to be physically separated to avoid interference which was depending on power output I believe (yayyy electromagnetic equations).

Additionally also, I can't remember which channel since it's been years since summer, but one of mine (and all its subchannels) would always lag a bit on a hot sunny day but would do fantastically in the rain. The other one was more or less the opposite. I've since repositioned it and have had clear picture/audio almost constantly that I've noticed.

TL;dr:

I'm pretty sure they're on entirely separate towers based on maps and prior reception differences.