WFAA causes commercial snafu to interrupt Jimmy Kimmel's tearful monologue about Uvalde, TX school shooting

[Will_H_69_9]

On Wednesday, Jimmy Kimmel Live aired a few minutes later than normal on WFAA, the ABC Station in Dallas owned by TEGNA (soon to be owned by Cox Media Group after the TEGNA/Standard General merger is complete as conditions of the merger) due to WFAA extending their 10 PM News for a second night in a row to cover the tragic massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and Jimmy Kimmel delivered a emotional tearful monologue about the very tragedy, and during the broadcast, the Dallas station cut off the monologue and played the local ads that would had aired in the first ad break of Jimmy Kimmel Live. Most likely the commercial snafu was due to a issue with the automation timing of the commercials and it cuing at the wrong time due to the show coming on later and WFAA had to apologized after Kimmel learned of the snafu from angry Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex fans of Kimmel.

WFAA issued a apology for the snafu on their twitter account and Jimmy Kimmel accepted the apology in a follow up tweet saying he has personal and professionally known those at WFAA about nearly 20 years (Kimmel's show has been on ABC since early 2003 and will have it's 20th anniversary next year.) and now knows they didn't mean for it to happen.

Also this wasn't the first issue with Jimmy Kimmel's show on WFAA this week as Tuesday's show was "Joined In Progress" due to WFAA's 10 PM Newscast running late.

WFAA also went ahead and reair the monologue in it's entirety today on Daybreak and the Midday News cast at 11 AM with a apology before airing it in said newscast.

Reports of the story from Deadline:
https://deadline.com/2022/05/dallas...nologue-texas-shooting-politicians-1235033463

The report from Entertainment Weekly:
Texas TV station apologizes for interrupting Jimmy Kimmel monologue about Uvalde shooting

The report from People Magazine:
https://people.com/tv/jimmy-kimmel-...school-shooting-cut-for-commercials-in-texas/

The story from NextTV/Broadcast & Cable:
https://www.nexttv.com/news/jimmy-kimmels-gun-control-monologue-interrupted-on-wfaa-dallas

WFAA's Apology from their website:
Jimmy Kimmel delivers powerful monologue in wake of Uvalde elementary school shooting, lambasting legislators for lack of action

 

[Mediafrog+]

Appears WFAA did a server delay of the Kimmel show but failed to adjust the commercial break hit times in the playout automation to compensate for the late start.

Not sure where the WFAA master control is these days. TEGNA was supposedly going to hub their ABC stations in Jacksonville but I don’t know if that plan is operational yet. In hubbed operations multiple stations running network programming can have their local breaks triggered simultaneously, so if one station is out of pattern its playout schedule has to be adjusted separately…and the engineers at the hub have to be aware of what is going on at the station they are feeding.