Red Sox fans freak over DirecTV outage
Updated 1:55 p.m. PDT with DirecTV's response.
DirecTV apparently had big trouble delivering ESPN2's coverage Tuesday morning of the season opener between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's, who are playing the game in Tokyo.
The number of reader comments to a 6:29 a.m. blog post about the outage by Amalie Benjamin, who covers the Red Sox for The Boston Globe, soared past 120 within a couple hours after the transmission failure began. The fans, naturally, are calling for congressional hearings on the matter.
While the problem seemed to have been remedied by 10 a.m. East Coast time, we were still waiting to hear from DirecTV about what exactly might have been the problem. It's probably no small comfort to Sox fans, though, that the team won 6-5 on a Manny Ramirez two-run double in the 10th.
DirecTV's response
In an e-mail, DirecTV's director of public relations, Robert Mercer, offered the company's apologies for the inconvenience, saying it was the result of "temporary technical difficulties" that did not affect the majority of channels and that have since been corrected.
In the case of the Red Sox game, any customers who have NESN or ESPN2 in HD were able to see the entire game. For customers who watch NESN in Standard Definition (SD), we were able to bring the channel back at the top of the seventh inning. For customers who watch ESPN2 in SD the channel came back on later, after the game was over.
Replays on both ESPN2 and NESN were planned for Tuesday afternoon Eastern time.
How can that be anywhere close to a natural response? It is utterly stupid to think that congress should have anything to do with the availability of TV service. It is DirecTV's responsibility, not the government's, and there is nothing the government can or should even attempt do about it. And if you really think you need to sue DirecTV, go right ahead. I hope the judge just laughs in your face when you try to sue over something so absolutely ridiculous.
Furthermore, you sports nuts need to get a life. It is, after all, just a game. And besides, this is not the first time in history, by far, that people have missed the end of a big game because of media service failure. Get over your selfish little pity party, watch the reruns, and get on with life. Honestly, there are things worth causing an uproar over. The 9/11 attacks were worth an uproar. A baseball game is not.
And on the "you sports nuts need to get a life" thing. You could insert a ton of different types of people in there... You iPhone nuts need to get a life, it's just a phone. You computer nuts need to get a life, it's just a machine. You political nuts need to get a life, it's just a poll. Whatever. People are passionate about a lot of things and I'm glad that they are. Makes life interesting.
2. God forbid should a person be aggravated because yet again, a large company that is paid a lot of money to provide a service, fails to do so.
3. Is it so terrible that people become passionate about their favorite distraction? I'm sure the rest of you never get mad about anything unless it is a world changing reason right? Just remember this the next time something you pay for and really want is held back from you for some mysterious reason.
10 a.m. East Coast time..." came from .. after 11am EDT .. I'm still
out on the affected channels .. did a cold reboot just to make sure.
- DirecTV
- by hugghins March 25, 2008 8:28 AM PDT
- What else is new - DirecTV can tear up an anvil with a powder puff. If it wasn't for the fact that I get the Extra Innings pack from them, I'd drop their arse. They constantly screw up billing, it takes forever to get to talk to one of the customer service monkeys, and their website - geesh.
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