Update: Station's president issues statement

Stan Pylant, President & General Manager of WHNT Channel 19 issued the following statement to RAW STORY Monday morning: Sunday night at approximately 6pm, WHNT lost the network feed of 60 Minutes for twelve minutes at the beginning of a segment on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Upon investigation, WHNT learned that our station's CBS receiver that allows us to receive programming from the CBS network's feed failed. WHNT engineers responded as quickly as possible to diagnose the problem and were able to restore the feed at 6:12pm. WHNT aired the segment in its entirety last night at 10:15pm during our late news and it is currently posted on WHNT.com as well.

We apologize to all of our Tennessee Valley viewers for the interruption and we can assure you there was no intent whatsoever to keep anyone from seeing the broadcast.

CBS's 60 Minutes broadcast Sunday regarding the alleged political prosecution of Democratic Alabama governor Don Siegelman went dark in the northern third of Alabama last night. According to WHNT-TV, the local CBS affiliate, the issue was caused by a technical malfunction.

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"We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring a report titled, 'The Prosecution of Don Siegelman,'" a WHNT story said.

CBS News – which owns 60 Minutes – denied any problem on their end.

Scott Horton of Harper’s magazine reported late last night that CBS was directly pointing back at the local outlets as the cause of the problem.

"I contacted CBS News in New York and was told that 'there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19, which had the signal and had functioning transmitters.' I was told that the decision to blacken screens across Northern Alabama 'could only have been an editorial call.'"

WHNT, Channel 19 of Huntsville, Alabama, issued a press release shortly after the broadcast.

After Horton's report, Channel 19 issued another account of the problem:

The network re-aired the broadcast during their 10pm news.

The interview is available on the CBS website.

The White House has put pressure on CBS to kill the show, those close to the case say. Journalists covering the story have been attacked. The case's most prominent whistleblower, Dana Jill Simpson, recently testified to Congress, under oath, about Rove's involvement in politicizing the Bush Justice Department.

Her house mysteriously caught fire after she came forward.

WHNT in Huntsville Alabama was purchased by Oak Hill Capital Partners from the New York Times Company early last year. Oak Hill is owned by the Bass brothers, Bush fundraisers at the "Pioneer" level – raising over $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaigns in both 2000 and 2004. Lee Bass is perhaps the best known member of the Bass family for his role in George W. Bush’s failed energy venture called Spectrum 7 and later for his bailing out of Harken Energy.

The Oak Hill connection emerged last night on Democratic Underground.

RAW STORY has been at the front of the Siegelman story, and was the first to reveal detailed information about former Bush Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the scandal.

The 60 Minutes broadcast, appears below.