’60 Minutes’ Blackout In Ala. Under Investigation
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The top American press regulator said his staff would look into why an Alabama television station went off the air as the CBS News program “60 Minutes” aired a segment questioning the jailing of a former Democratic governor.
“It is important that the broadcaster come forward and explain what happened,” the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, a Republican, said yesterday.
Mr. Martin said he had asked staff to write a letter to WHNT in Huntsville, which had an eight-minute blackout during the February 24 broadcast of the almost 14-minute segment on Don Siegelman. Equipment failure caused the outage, a spokeswoman for the station’s owners, a group of investors led by the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, Pam Taylor, said. The station aired the segment in its entirety twice following the interrupted broadcast, she said in an e-mail.
