On Thursday, February 14th, WKRG-TV, WEAR-TV, WALA-TV, and WPMI-TV broke away from their regular programming schedules between 10:22 a.m. and 10:28 a.m. to broadcast a news conference at the Alabama Cruise Terminal in Mobile about the effort to tow the cruise ship "Triumph" of the Carnival Cruise Lines to the cruise terminal after its propulsion system lost electrical power due to a fire in its engine room. WALA-TV, WPMI-TV, and WKRG-TV only broadcast the parts of the the news conference with Terry Thornton, the vice president of planning and revenue for the Carnival Cruises, and Jimmy Lyons, the director of the Alabama Port Authority, speaking while WEAR-TV broadcast all of the speakers for the news conference.
WALA-TV, WPMI-TV, and WKRG-TV started broadcasting regular programming again by 10:45 a.m. while WEAR-TV continued to broadcast reports, videos, and commentaries about the cruise ship until sometime around 12:30 p.m. with commercial breaks in between before broadcasting special reports about the cruise ship every hour between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. WKRG-TV interrupted their regular programming again shortly after 10:45 a.m. to broadcast video of the cruise ship being towed into Mobile before returning to regular programming at 11:00 a.m. WALA-TV and WPMI-TV broke away from their regular programming schedules again between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. with news about the cruise ship while WKRG-TV continued to broadcast their regular programming.
WKRG-TV's local 12:00 p.m. newscast ended later than usual at 12:31 p.m. rather than before 12:30 p.m. as a result of the newscast being devoted to the news about the cruise ship. Normally the station would have started broadcasting "The Bold and the Beautiful", a serial from CBS, at 12:30 p.m. in accordance with their regular programming for Monday through Friday. Instead they started broadcasting it at 12:36 p.m. when CBS start providing the second part of the episode after a commercial break.
By 3:20 p.m., all of the stations broke away from their regular programming schedules again to broadcast another news conference from the cruise terminal about the cruise ship from then until 3:30 p.m.. By 3:31 p.m., all of the stations were broadcasting regular programming again.
By 4:01 p.m., WPMI-TV had broken away from their regular programming schedule to broadcast a special report about the cruise ship while WALA-TV and WEAR-TV were broadcasting their regular local 4:00 p.m. newscasts with news about the cruise ship. By this time, WKRG-TV was still broadcasting their regular programming, including a syndicated episode of the situation comedy "The Big Bang Theory". WPMI-TV returned to regular programming by 4:05 p.m with "Judge Judy", a syndicated courtroom program, all ready in progress.
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