The TBS fiasco on Saturday night

[Kevin Vahey]

Since Scott brought it up in his newsletter I have to comment on the
fiasco that happened at the start of Game 6.

I was working crew on the TBS feed and everything left St Pete fine
and in fact the multi-camera platform on mlb.com was up and running
during the blackout.

I was told yesterday that the likely cause was sabotage do to ongoing
labor problems at Turner in Atlanta. What is mind boggling is master
control in Atlanta had no way to manually switch to the studio control
room where the incoming feed from St Pete would then be sweetned with
commercials and promos.

MLB most likely will opt out of their contract with TBS as the cable
outlet did not reach the benchmark audience promised. The final insult
came when the Tampa Bay football team got a higher rating on NBC last
night than baseball in ther Tampa market.

Regarding what happened in Buffalo yesterday CBS used to have
generators available for backup power for top level telecasts but in a
cost cutting move no longer does so.

Scott did Time-Warner take over the old Aldephi system in Buffalo and
what are they replacing WIVB with?