I got to a sports bar in Seekonk, MA right before 8 p.m. and while I knew I was not going to get a seat to watch Game 6 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Tampa Bay, I certainly was not expecting to see “Bloopers and Practical Jokes” with a pre-stroke Dick Clark. Then when the show signed off at 8:07 p.m. and went to the “Steve Harvey Show”, you knew something was wrong.
There was no explanation at first and this angered many fans who wondered what exactly was going on. There was no crawl at first, and all we wanted was something to let us know what was happening.
Luckily, I had downloaded MLB At Bat for my new iPhone and I was able to update a group of people about the BJ Upton home run. Fortunately, the feed for the game returned in the first inning and the patrons at the sports bar calmed down before a riot broke out.
Around 10 p.m., I received an e-mail from Turner Sports trying to explain what happened. Because I could not post it here, I sent it over to the Sox & Dawgs blog asking the fine people over there to publish it. Thanks to Steve for putting it up immediately.
I do have the statement for you now that I’m home:
STATEMENT FROM TBS REGARDING ALCS GAME 6Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped causing the master router and its backup – which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound – to shut down. This impacted our live feed from being distributed to any of the other networks in the Turner portfolio and caused the delay in our coverage. Both our primary and backup routers were impacted by this problem. We apologize to baseball fans for this mishap that caused a delay in our coverage.
I wish that a crawl had been put up as soon as possible allowing us to know right away instead of being left in the lurch. Fans will understand, but not after 10 minutes into the game.
If you’re still wondering, that’s the poop from Turner.
