column command can't process null separator

I can get column to use tab as a field separator:

$ printf "a\tb\tc\n" | column -s $'\t' -t
a  b  c

But using null separator doesn't seem to work:

$ printf "a\0b\0c\n" | column -s $'\0' -t
column: line too long

To confirm, the null separators are really there:

$ printf "a\0b\0c\n" | xxd
00000000: 6100 6200 630a                           a.b.c.

What could be going wrong here?