AUBURN – A downed tree and lost power meant no Oscars for some cable, analog and digital TV viewers Sunday night.

Ken Bauder, president and general manager of WMTW TV 8, the ABC affiliate based in Auburn, said a downed tree near West Baldwin knocked out power to the station’s transmitter site about 9:15 p.m. Sunday.

“Typically that’s not a big deal because we have two backups and they click on in sequence,” Bauder said. “But on Sunday, the way they created the outage also tripped the breakers that not only shut down the transmitter but also the breakers that turn on the generators.”

WMTW’s fiber optic feed directly from the station’s Auburn headquarters was not affected. That provides the station’s programming to Time Warner cable, as well as Comcast.

But people relying on over-the-air transmissions, both analog signals and digital, lost the feed. That includes Oxford Networks.

Bauder said he couldn’t estimate how many viewers were effected, and Oxford Networks officials said they were not even aware there was a problem until Monday morning.

“Our logs didn’t show that we had any problems, but some of our customers called us to find out what happened,” said Matt Jancovic, director of marketing and customer service at Oxford Networks. “Some of our employees had the same problem, but it never showed as a problem for our end.”

Bauder would not estimate how many viewers were affected. He said it took more than two hours for engineers to reach the transmitter station because of the storm.

“One of them actually drove off road and into a ditch, and we had to send someone else out to get them,” Bauder said. “But by the time we got there, it was just a matter of resetting the breakers and getting it re-established.”

Engineers had both the digital and analog transmitters back up and running by 11:50 p.m.

“But on top of all that, some of our viewers had their power go off, and the cable companies had their own problems because of the storm,” Bauder said.