WGIR 610 AM - unforgivable mistakes during Red Sox broadcasts...

[John J. Francini]

The past two Red Sox Baseball broadcasts on WGIR-AM 610 
Manchester--Sunday and tonight-- have been nothing short of a 
textbook on how not to do a network broadcast.

The problems I've heard include:

o Running the broadcast on the 7-second delay used for talk shows, 
making it impossible to use the audio as a substitute for the TV 
coverage.

o Missing the start of local between-inning commercial breaks, and 
thus having 30-60 seconds of dead air. And then adding insult to 
injury by running ALL the local commercials, even though they end up 
cutting into the broadcast by a minute or more.

o Cutting AWAY from the broadcast at 10:00 PM to pick up some sort of 
top-of-the-hour news program from some satellite network, and then 
the start of an hour of Art Bell via satellite, and then finally 
realizing at 10:07 that they screwed up royally and returning to the 
ball game.

o Playing local ads ON TOP OF the game audio.


What the hell is going on over there?  Is this the sort of 
scintillating production quality you get when Clear Channel buys a 
station? The fact that this has gone on during more than one game 
means one of two possibilities:

a) Incompetence.

b) Automation problems at the station

c) Some sort of protest on the part of the engineering staff of WGIR. 
Against who?  Clear Channel?  The Red Sox?  If so, I don't care: "a 
pox on all their houses", as the saying goes.

It's a darn good thing that I'm in Nashua and don't _have_ to listen 
to WGIR; I can get a (mostly) listenable signal on my SuperRadios 
from WEEI-850 Boston. This is in addition to the fact that WMSN-1590 
Nashua, which is still _listed_ as a Red Sox Radio network station, 
hasn't broadcast a single game this year.  Did they drop the contract?

Sorry to be so angry-sounding, but it's very frustrating.  Having 
this happen one night is one thing; having it happen over and over 
again is unforgiveble.

John Francini, a frustrated lifelong Red Sox (and radio) fan...

P.S. Any way I can complain to station management?  The Web site 
appears to be content-free when it comes to useful contact 
addresses...


-- 
----
John Francini <mailto:francini@mac.com>
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