Just before the end of President Obama's inaugural address -- reportedly one of the most-watched events of all time -- Duluth's CBS and NBC affiliates switched to some local commercials.
Local viewers scrambled for their remotes.
"I was just so dumbfounded that I was watching a commercial now," said Matthew Northrup, who switched from Channel 6 to Channel 3, only to encounter another commercial. The two stations operate together as the Northland's NewsCenter.
"He was going through what George Washington said during the height of the Revolutionary War," Northrup said, and, all of a sudden, a commercial.
Northrup wasn't the only one who noticed.
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"We've gotten between60 and 70 phone calls and12 e-mails," said Dave Jensch, station manager.
Jensch said an engineer trying to repair a backup server that wasn't online somehow triggered another server to switch to a commercial break, causing an eight-second interruption on KDLH Channel 3 and a15-second interruption on KBJR Channel 6.
"I almost had a heart attack," Jensch said.
The station reran the speech Tuesday evening on KDLH.
While Northrup, of Sawyer, said he knows he can read the text and view the video later, he said seeing the speech live was just something special. And because he didn't have cable, he couldn't find another good station elsewhere when the commercials came on.
"This is something major here," Northrup said of the speech. "It's just the whole, 'Where were you when this happened?'"
