Comcast outage

If you were trying to watch local stations this morning between sometime after 7 a.m. and 8:49 a.m. and you were using a TV connected to Comcast through a cable box, you might have been out of luck.

Comcast had an outage that seemed to affect only the local channels and only on digitally connected sets. TVs connected directly to a cable coming from the wall were not affected (at least at my house; if someone else had a different experience, let me know). and for some viewers it didn't matter whether or not there was a cable box.

UPDATE: Here's a statement from Bob Grove, senior manager of public relations and community affairs:

This morning an equipment failure resulted in a disruption of programming on a limited number of digital and analog standard-definition channels (HD channels were unaffected). The issue was detected immediately by our internal monitoring tools, and our engineers responded quickly, restoring service within 90 minutes. We sincerely apologize to our customers. At this time we do not have a specific number of customers impacted.

I have yet to memorize the HD channel numbers -- it's news, I don't care if I see Diane Sawyer's pores -- so I often forget to check the HD channels when something like this happens.