As the Indianapolis Colts’ nightmare season wears on, one Indiana station recently decided that it had seen enough.
WISE, the Fox-affiliate in Fort Wayne, chose not to air the Colts’ game this past Sunday, opting to broadcast the Chicago Bears instead.
“The buck stops with me,” Jerry Giesler, president and general manager of Granite Broadcasting’s Fort Wayne stations, told The Journal Gazette. “We talked a lot about it internally. Of course, the year in, year out logical choice would be the Colts. Absolutely, no question. The reason we went with the Bears was to follow the compelling story, their [playoff] hopes alive, a new quarterback.”
WISE’s signal spreads west towards the Chicago area so Giesler decided not to air the Colts home game in the early afternoon and instead chose the late afternoon game between the Bears and the Oakland Raiders. Following NFL broadcast rules, Fox stations were only able to air one game this past Sunday.
As The Journal Gazette points out, Fort Wayne is considered a “secondary market for the Colts” so WISE is only required to air Indianapolis’ road games.
“My apologies go to all the Colts fans who thought we let them down,” Giesler said. “But I think we also do our job of giving balance throughout the year of giving critical games.”
[h/t Yahoo! Sports]