Dallas Station Puts Football Game Ahead of People's Lives

Sunday night as wicked weather rolled through the Dallas viewing area, stations were breaking in with severe weather coverage.

But, NBC owned KXAS stayed with the Dallas Cowboys football game.

Most often, stations catch heat from viewers for breaking into a sports event to offer up potentially life-saving information. This is one of the few times where we see a station worry more about the game than keeping their viewers safe.

You have to wonder since this is an NBC O&O, was KXAS more concerned with pissing off corporate by dumping out of the game, then they were about viewers safety?

Or, since it was the hometown Dallas Cowboys, they thought interrupting the game could be a huge hit to their ratings?

Either way, the station made the wrong call. Viewers might not like it, but it is a station’s responsibility to give them the information they need when the weather turns nasty.

After the fact, KXAS did admit on their website that they should have put the concern for people’s lives first. This is what they posted:

During Sunday night's Dallas Cowboys game, we made a mistake by not immediately interrupting the football game with a Tornado Warning.

Although our meteorologists were tracking thunderstorms across the area when the National Weather Service issued a Tornado Warning for Dallas County, we delayed breaking into programming for six minutes.

Our meteorologists were also streaming live weather coverage throughout the evening on our site, NBCDFW.com. We also alerted the football audience to our weather livestream throughout the game.

When it comes to dealing with severe weather, we know that seconds matter. We should have broken into football programming sooner. We apologize and want you to know that we’re doing everything in our power to make sure this does not happen again.

We look forward to regaining the trust of anyone we may have disappointed.

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