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DirecTV customers in Pittsburgh miss final moments of Super Bowl

PITTSBURGH — Many DirecTV subscribers in the Pittsburgh area missed the thrilling finish to Super Bowl 51 due to a technical issue that began during the final minutes of the fourth quarter and continued through the end of the game.

DirecTV's customer service team replied to many furious customers on Twitter during the outage, acknowledging the issue and telling them it would be resolved soon.

Tracy Sylvester, a South Hills resident and die-hard Patriots fan, had his reaction to the outage caught on camera.

"If you're going to do something to me that is about the worst thing you can do to me in life,” Sylvester told Channel 11 News. "In the biggest game for Tom Brady and my franchise to get their fifth championship, I didn't see it. I only got a text from my brother.”

Sylvester said while his excitement for the win outweighs his anger, he said he’s still considering cancelling his DirecTV subscription.

"They can't replace the moment. I wouldn't expect them to do that, but at least they could do something to say, ‘We're sorry,’" he said.

Brandy Bell-Truskey, a representative from AT&T Global Media Relations, sent a brief statement to Channel 11 News about the cause of the problem:

“We want to let our customers know that we too were disappointed that the signal provided by WPGH (FOX 53) failed at a most inopportune time Sunday night. The outage was due to a failure of equipment managed by FOX 53, located on their premises. This equipment is not owned or managed by DIRECTV. The signal was restored only after engineers at FOX 53 reset the equipment at their facility."

DirecTV is owned by AT&T.

Fox 53 Pittsburgh issued a statement on its Facebook page:

"DirecTV subscribers – We are aware that you encountered reception problems during Super Bowl LI. We are truly sorry that this happened. On the Fox 53 end our over-the-air, cable, FiOS, and Dish Network signals were at 100% - which leads us to believe the problem was on the DirecTV end. As soon as we were aware that there was an issue, our engineering team was on the phone with their engineers to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. We are continuing to work with DirecTV to ensure that they do not have issues receiving our signal."

According to tvpredictions.com, subscribers in Pittsburgh were not alone. People in Tucson and Phoenix also reported that they lost their picture, or that their receivers would repeatedly freeze.

 

Cox Media Group

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