Monday, July 24, 2006

Popularity Contest

A few days ago, or, "a few days back," I'd say for 2-5% more street cred, there was a minor uproar from directv customers who apparently stopped getting NESN pre- and post-games. The weird thing was, the day I found out about this, I saw an ad during the Sox game (on my Extra Innings package) saying something like "Directv customers, now you can watch the Sox in HD..."

Yet still, people went off on NESN, and since it's owned (80%, I believe) by the Red Sox, they went off on them, too. Once again, it just seemed like people were looking for any reason to call Lucchino the devil. One day without a pregame, and it's "For them to go out of their way to show us they don't care..." and "If they want it to be 'Red Sox Nation,' why would they purposely try to destroy us all and kill our crops, making it impossible to feed our families?"

Within days, the new directv package had kicked in. The Red Sox weren't trying to kill you.

But let's just say this did happen. Let's say, if you have directv, you get the games--the NESN feed every time-- but you just don't get the pre- and post-games. Boo-freakin'-hoo. I lived in New England for the first thirty years of my life, and I never was allowed to have NESN, because Fairfield County, Connecticut is considered outside their territory. Even now, with Extra Innings, which I paid a lot for, I only get the NESN feed half the time, and no matter what feed I get, there is no pre- or post-game. And when we play the Yanks or Mets or on Fox, I'm blacked out of the NESN feed automatically. So, I'm sorry you directv people missed, like, four pre-game shows, but please, beggars, quit your choosin'.

So, if I don't post again until tomorrow morning, it means that this:

"Last Updated on: 07/23/2006 20:40:04 Currently Cable customers in New York, NY may experience difficulties connecting to the Internet. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience."

is still in effect. You'd think they could at least update the status, jeez. So, in this modern age, and considering the dough we shell out for this internet thing, apology not excepted, Earthlink or TimeWarner or whoever you are, and get your asses in gear.

If I do post tonight, it will conatin the winner of the first-ever-video vote here at ARSFIPT. The current tally:

Wayne's World unpopular original tune video: 0 votes
World Football League Knights vs. Monarchs Preview '92: 0 votes

It's a dead heat! Your vote could break the tie! Vote now in the comments.

Oh, I almost forgot. As promised: Tonight we've got a game with the Athletics. What does that mean? Say it with me, people: Bad news for the Athletics!

Comments:
Jason--I'm guessing you went over to my movie site, where the WFL one is already up, but the Wayne's World one isn't. I just meant I'd put one of the two up here. So, I screwed this up, because I'm sure some other people saw that one already, too.

What does this mean? Well, they were both going up anyway, so I'll just put them both up tonight. But since you mentioned the Wayne's World one, and I'm now officially closing the voting, that counts as a vote for that one. So, it wins, and they'll both go up tonight. And for the next vote, I won't make it confusing by already having one of the contestants up already on a different site.

Thanks for playing.
 
Note: that comment was in response to Jason's on the post below. I am really effing this whole thing up.
 
This smokescreen of confusion is obviously just a ploy for you to take democracy into your own hands and subvert the will of the people. You will make an excellent dictator, Herr Jere.
 
Here's the long and short of what I heard re: the NESN pre/ post blackouts-

DirectTV people pay for both EI and a seperated package to get the local channels (ie, NESN) 24/7. After paying that second seperate fee, they were then being blacked out anyway and it was because NESN wouldn't pay an extra fee in order to show MLB highlights in out of market areas, and as a result they were shut off in said OOM areas.

They were the only channel it happened on, which (rightly, IMO) lead to people being upset at a team with that much money skimping on a nominal fee.

They were so deluged w/ responses that changes were put into place.

I can understand getting pissed at this, personally.

Per Lucchino- I don't know anyone that thinks he's the devil, but I do know two things pretty concrete-
a) he has a fairly well documented history of being a bit of a prick
b) a lot of his backhanded bullshit lead to the Theo fiasco this offseason.

I'm more or less indifferent towards him, but I'd not trust him as far as I could throw him, personally.
 
It just seems to me that there wasn't even time for peoples' complaints to actually affect this.

If what you say is true, and maybe it is, still, those people have nothing on people in Fairfield County who have never been allowed to have NESN, and get plenty screwed on blackout issues.

Are you telling me, after decades of complaints about that, NESN got this few days worth of complaints and just immediately changed everything around? It doesn't make sense.
 
Well, one thing NESN can do something about, the other (Ffld County) they obviously cannot.

Here's the thread on it at SoSH:
http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=6986

Plenty of justifiable anger within hours, much less days. These people pay extra to get non-game related NESN, and were having it blacked out because NESN favored keeping a few dollars on a nominal fee. I'd be pissed too.
 
I'm just saying, if there are degrees of justifiability, that it's not as justified as the anger of not getting to see the games at all. While living IN New England. For 30 years.

And we'll keep watching to see what the final version of this story is.
 

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