That's usually down to the scale of the outage. Knock out half a city and yeah, the news is interested and water gets supplied via alternatives (bottles, localized fill stations, etc); one pipe supplying a neighbourhood bursts due to slow ground movement over time, nobody but that neighbourhood cares... I've experienced both.

My current issues are because a very small native government is managing treatment in our area, the systems are in desperate need of updating, and there's been a ton of expansion (new housing) added on, so they're struggling to cope. (this has been very unusual in my experience)

I've also lived in a completely different country where the water was very well managed. I walked out my front door after loosing water pressure one day and there was a new fountain of water pouring out of the middle of the street because the main line running under it broke, creating a sink hole and introducing contaminants to the now open pipe.

Similar to a power outage; a whole city loses power and you get national news articles about it, 1 house loses power and even the smallest local news doesn't really care as long as it's fixed relatively quickly.

/edit: well would you look at that. Woke up this morning; no water pressure. Pipe burt in the apartment building beside us, they had to turn off water to the whole lot (which includes me) to fix it. We're probably going to have to boil water for a day or so for extra caution.