In the past week, we have been beseiged by loyal FOX6 viewers wondering where their prime time shows: Prison Break, Bones, House, OC, Reunion, etc, have gone. We have even had people wonder if we are "part of a conspiracy" to cancel Kitchen Confidential and Arrested Development."
As most baseball fans know, FOX is the home of major league baseball, and when it comes to the playoffs and World Series, if you want to see baseball, you need to turn to FOX6 for the vast majority of the games.
In fact, at FOX6 we have so many baseball games in the month of October, that with the exception of our 10pm News, most of our programming 5-10pm is in a state of constant interruption and movement. In October, FOX prime actually goes on a "Baseball Haitus" for the entire month of October, with prime having to "kick-start" itself when when the World Series ends and we can once again return to our regularly scheduled programming on FOX6.
This year, because the Padres finally made it back to the playoffs, we at FOX6 (and UPN13) decided we needed to make sure that the viewers of San Diego also were able to see every Padre playoff game regardless of it's network source, FOX or ESPN. To make this goal a reality we bid for and won the rights to broadcast the ESPN games that carried the Padres.
All of us at FOX6 were very excited to have all the Padre playoff games and we even sent one of our terrific reporters and weekend Anchor, Jim Patton to St. Louis to report each day on these important viewer interest games for our 10pm and FOX in the Morning News shows.
Our thought was, "hey, with a little luck, the Padres can get back to the World Series...and if they do, every single game along the way will air on San Diego's Baseball playoff station, FOX6".
So, just imagine our own frustration and disappointment when today at approximately 1:50pm we lost our feed from ESPN, and as you loyal Padre viewers know, we didn't get it back for 10 excrutiatingly long minutes.
Within 30 seconds of losing the signal from ESPN, our switchboard and newsroom lit up with phone calls to complain. In addition, I am sure it would not come as a surprise to most of you that the phone calls contained language which sounded like it belonged in an R-rated movie that was rated R for "colorful language".
In fact, the most understanding comments we heard were; "what the hell are you idiots doing over there". Frankly, for our passionate Padre fans, that was a fair question. To be honest, as the GM of the station I had the same question; "what did we do and what happened to the game"?
Not being a psychic or an engineer, I immediately called our Chief Engineer, who is not only a brilliant man, but I also appreciate him for his ever-calm demeanor in moments of extreme crisis. I can tell you that while my own language was not "colorful", it did carry a very urgent and anxious tone since this was LIVE programming and the fact we were not LIVE had potentially very negative consequences on many levels, not the least of which was the anger of our viewers.
So, in the interest of giving all our listeners a detailed and complete explanation, I will share with you the exact information which our Chief Engineer shared with me today:
"Richard, this was not a Fox6 mistake. The detailed explanation is this: twice a year, when the sun lines up with a geosynchronous satellite, a satellite receiver gets bombarded with radio signals from the sun and the desired satellite signal is overwhelmed".
"In the broadcast world, this is predicted and we leapfrog reception from two satellites to avoid the outage. In the cable world, like ESPN2, they don't bother. That's why we, and the cable companies, lost about 10 minutes of audio and video during the game at about 1:50PM, and by the way, ESPN Radio was off the air as well".
So kind viewers, there you have it...explanations for both questions...and when you see the words; "geosynchronous satellite" you can be darn sure we are telling you the truth because without an engineer to explain this to me, I could never even pronounce the word, let alone spell it.
By the way, in case you are wondering, on Saturday, October 8th, FOX6 will be carrying a "Baseball playoff triple header":
1pm: Angels @ Yankees
4pm: Braves @ Astros
8pm: PADRES vs Cardinals (in San Diego)
We will follow this at 11pm with our newscast and then at 1130pm we will air the San Diego Chargers Power Report that normally airs Saturday at 6pm. Mad TV will follow at 12M...pushed back an hour.
On Sunday, due to our NFL commitments, FOX6 has double header NFL games:
10am Tampa Bay vs Jets
1PM. Eagles vs Cowboys
5PM. Baseball Playoffs (not Padres)
By they way, if the Padres can win the Saturday game, they will be assigned the Sunday 1pm game on ESPN, not the FOX 5pm game. This means to ensure the Padre playoff game is available to all San Diegan's, we will air it on our UPN13 station @1pm. So if we win Saturday, remember that...you need to turn to UPN13 at 1pm to see the game.
That is the full story. As you can see, a little more complicated than the questions would indicate, but if it makes you, our viewers, feel better, I never did claim to be a genius...just ask my wife, since oftentimes she would agree with the "idiot" label our fans attached to me today!
Have a good weekend...go Padres and GO CHARGERS on Monday night!
P.S. We received the following notice from ESPN on 10/7, a day late...
"You are probably all aware of this, but in case you are not. I am told that there is a potential for a sun outage on any of our 1 PM ETZ games over the next few days. Please be prepared to deal with it. I am also told that there is a good chance of rain delays or postponements on games played on the Atlantic seaboard. If there is a rain delay, listen closely to your AD lines. That will be your best and quickest line of communication. IF there is a postponement, at sometime AFTER the postponement takes place, MLB will advise how the next couple of days will be scheduled (or rescheduled)."