After a public outcry, WABC-TV reversed course today and said it will air the entire September 11 ceremony from ground zero, including the hours-long reading of the nearly 3,000 victims’ names.

The station’s initial decision to scale back coverage this year by broadcasting the name reading only on its digital cable channel and Web site was denounced by relatives of the victims, underscoring the sensitivity of commemorations to the victims.

The station had planned to carry the ceremony live but then switch to regular programming shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday on its main Channel 7. It changed its mind after reports of the reduced coverage appeared in local papers.

A vice president and news director at WABC, Kenny Plotnik, said he had spoken to a number of families, who expressed concern over not seeing the entire ceremony on the station’s main channel, and said they didn’t have access to digital cable or the Internet.

“I felt a lot of pain in these conversations that I had,” he said. “That’s not our intent, to hurt our audience.”

He emphasized, “We were not cutting our coverage. All we were doing was changing the venue.”

All of New York’s other local channels – WCBS, WNBC, WNYW, WWOR and WPIX – plan on broadcasting the entire event, from the first moment of silence to the reading of the last name. The commemoration usually lasts several hours.

“We’re doing this for the community that we live in,” a news director for WPIX, Karen Scott, said. “It touched a lot of people’s lives in the tri-state area. We needed to do a service for our viewers.”

A woman whose firefighter brother died in the attacks, Rosaleen Tallon, was pleased to hear of the decision. “I just think it’s a great thing to hear that they would reconsider,” she said.

This isn’t the first controversy connected to the event, or the ground zero site.

Earlier this year, the city announced plans to move the ceremony from ground zero to a nearby park because of ongoing construction at the World Trade Center site.

Family members were angry that they wouldn’t be able to walk down into the seven-story pit that was the trade center’s basement as they have in previous years.

After threats to boycott the ceremony and hold their own shadow remembrance, the city relented and agreed to allow them to descend briefly into the pit to lay flowers on the dusty bedrock.

Later, controversy arose over the participation of former mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani because some were concerned that his presence would politicize the event.

Over the years, there have been a number of emotional battles related to the rebuilding and the memorial at ground zero, including whether officials would build over the footprints of the towers and how the names would be arranged and listed on the memorial.