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

[francini@mac.com]

Steve and the list.

Sorry for the rant; I was just frustrated because I was driving home 
from the North and couldn't get WEEI until I was almost home, and I 
couldn't believe that they screwed up AGAIN.  I was stuck with WGIR 
until I got close to Nashua.

I still wish WEEI would buy a powerful FM signal up in the Manchester 
area, as they did in Rhode Island.

As a baseball fan and almost-constant AM radio listener, I tend to hold 
stations to a high standard of audio quality and presentation. Perhaps 
I've been listening to large-market stations (from Boston proper) for 
too long.

I also suppose that my Clear Channel rant came about because of how 
they dumped Howard Stern from their signals because he "switched sides" 
from pro-Bush to anti-Bush. Rather petty, considering that dumping 
Stern could be AM drive suicide, ratings-wise, once he lands on another 
signal in those markets.  I also have no love for monopolies or 
oligopolies of any stripe.

That's where it all came from.  Once again I apologize for any 
undeserved invective.

What is IBOC?

John

On Jun 16, 2004, at 8:27 AM, SteveOrdinetz wrote:

>  John J. Francini wrote:
>> 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.
>
>
> I wouldn't necessarily consider this as an error on their part...why 
> should it matter to them if you want to sync up with tv?  Once IBOC 
> happens, get used to it.
>
>
>
>> 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:
>
>
>
> Calm down.  First of all Clear Channel (or one of it's predecessors) 
> has owned this station for at least 10 years.  Last I knew they used 
> board ops for Sox games for this reason...before this year WEEI 
> screwed up so much that automating a game was hit or miss...they used 
> subaudible tones and it was not uncommon for their board op to send 
> the wrong ones.  Tones also don't always decode properly either.  WEEI 
> started using dedicated relay closures this year, and problems with 
> automating games have largely vanished.  Maybe because of this WGIR 
> decided to try automating them again.
>
> I don't know how Prophet handles satellite automation...some systems 
> are better than others, and sports programming can be difficult to 
> automate because network events don't occur at fixed times like in 
> regular syndicated programming.  It could be that whoever programs the 
> automation is on vacation this week, and their fill-in isn't totally 
> up to speed on programming it.
>
> While I agree that this sounds bush league, I don't see the need for 
> this rant.  Whether you like their programming or not, Clear Channel 
> has a rep for doing a good job from a technical standpoint.  Their 
> business # is in the phone book, why not call and ask for the PD?  I'm 
> sure they want to know if there are problems.
>
>
>
>