The blackout started on January 30th.
The station blackout started at midnight when Tribune's existing contract with DirecTV expired.
DirecTV made Sprout, which was already available to most of its subscribers, available to all after the blackout started.
On July 10, the day before the blackout started, 1.76 million viewers were watching Nick during the day, according to Nielsen.
The blackout started when several feeder lines, which take electricity to the local neighbourhood from the main power lines, suddenly failed.
Mary Gayeski (back to camera, center): "We decided that once the blackout started, we'd stay out until the sun came up or the power went back on".
The 2003 blackout started at 4 11 in the afternoon, which would make impossible the beautiful and nearly monochromatic tonalities of Rocco's nighttime illustrations (rarely has a children's book featured so much unalloyed navy and black).
Even that is likely to be low-balling it, since the blackout started at a peak time and traffic to the site is probably more concentrated during daytime hours.
"It is definitely a contributor," said Raymond J. Palmieri, compliance program manager at East Central Area Reliability Coordination Agreement, an industry group charged with ensuring the delivery of power in the Midwest, including Ohio, where the blackout started.
Mr. Bush was on the first day of a two-day trip raising funds and making speeches in California when the blackout started, and White House officials gave no indication that the president considered returning to Washington or traveling to New York.
The best guess now is that the blackout started when a power plant or transmission line failure in the Midwest caused an enormous, instantaneous reversal of the power flow that had been moving from west to east, causing some lines to be overloaded and shut down.
