Re: Lock Monster Game

["Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@channel1.com>]

This weekends attempt by MediaOne to launch a regional sports network shows
that local cable companies still have much to learn about moving signals
from one town to another.

While MediaOne has strived to make everything uniform in Eastern
Massachusetts, one must remember that at one time, many of these systems
were another company at one time.

Lowell was Colony Cable, Cambridge was American Cablesystems, and so on.
Passing a simple RF signal from one system to another can result in some
"interesting" patchwork and routing.

Cable systems also show their weakness when it comes time to carry back-up
or alternate feeds or blacking out programming. Say ESPN is showing the Red
Sox but must show another game here to protect NESN, or the over the air
station. ESPN notifies the affected systems of the backup transponder, and
each local headend must adjust on their own. Sometimes the paperwork doesn't
get to the proper people....and the poor viewer at home gets a blank screen.

Worse is when automatic timers are used for blackouts. Cablevision in Boston
for years would have to blackout WPIX at Midnight because of Star Trek, and
quite often a Yankee game would run late. Viewers watching a tie game in
extra innings would suddenly see a blackout graphic.

------------------------------