TBS tech issues - very funny

I really thought I was going crazy last night. I went to turn on Game Six of the American league Championship Series on my television, hoping to see the start of the game between the Boston Red Sox (facing elimination) and the Tampa Bay Rays.

It's been difficult enough to find these baseball playoff games on a basic cable channel that nobody watches. It's been difficult enough to accept the fact that MLB Owners Cartel Czar Bud Selig (I refuse to call him a commissioner) has so little interest in building up his sport in his own country that he potentially shows only 14 out of a possible 41 playoff games over-the-air. It's been difficult to sit through the awful pre-game shows and the constant graphics reminders that I'm watching TBS. It's been difficult to watch Craig Sager's ridiculous sport jackets, and Chip Caray's misappropriation of his vocal inflection. It's been difficult to watch the 27,384 promos for Frank TV (and trust me, I think Caliendo is hilarious).

But last night, imagine how I felt watching a re-run of the Steve Harvey Show from like 5 years ago because TBS had technical difficulties with the feed and couldn't show the game for the first 29 minutes!

But that isn't the worst part. Knowing that TBS is part of the Turner family of networks, I quickly began flipping back-and-forth to both CNN and Headline News, convinced they would have something acknowledging the TBS difficulties and keeping me informed of what was happening. After all, CNN had a live news program in-progress with Rick Sanchez (a name I have loathed since Hurricane Andrew, more on that in a later post), and Headline News was re-running a Nancy Grace episode (I just love watching her make words like prosecution into 7 syllable words). Yet, neither of these networks had any information about what was happening. And all TBS kept doing was running a crawl that they were having technical difficulties. Of course, the first crawl didn't appear until 8:10, ten minutes into the expected broadcast of the game.

Bud Selig's incompetence and ineptitude is only surpassed by that of George W Bush. Nice going Selig - thanks for putting these important games on a network that can't even handle a transmission issue. Somebody at TBS should be fired over this.

What makes me say that? Think about this: in 1989, ABC was preparing to broadcast Game 3 of the World Series between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. During the opening tease for the game, Tim McCarver was making a point about base-running when the screen shaked, his audio repeated 3 seconds, and then Al Michaels exclaimed, "I think we're having an earthqua..." before the screen went to black. A few seconds later, after the "Loma Prieta Earthquake" rocked northern California, ABC came back on the air with a full screen ABC World Series logo and audio from Al Michaels stating, "Well folks, that's the greatest open in the history of television, bar none!"

This was in 1989, when the technology wasn't as sophisticated as it is today, and ABC was back on the air within a minute - not 28 minutes! TBS went Earnest Byner, fumbling the ball hard at the goal line; Turner Networks dropped the ball by not jumping into action and helping frustrated viewers with what was happening during those 28 minutes; and MLB dropped the ball by choosing these clowns in the first place.

I'm changing my mind - I'm not writing in None of the Above for President, I'm writing in Bud Selig. People think this country can't get worse, but if Bud ran the country like he runs baseball, I can't wait to watch the carnage that would unfold.

Bud, seriously, can you please resign now? Or maybe you can just cancel the World Series again...