The Idiot File: TBS, You Fucked Up

I was at home tonight, and having the world of cable TV available to me, I grabbed my plate of General Tso's Chicken and steamed rice, and headed to my room at 7:50 to prepare to watch the game against the Red Sox and Rays.

Well, when I flip the channel to TBS, they are showing an old episode of 'TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes'.

I was like 'ok', where's game six?

Then at 8:00, expecting to see a game, TBS is showing a classic episode of the 'Steve Harvey Show'. Why? How? What in the hell is going on?

Well, since MLB.TV blocks us here in the United States from watching the game live on the computers, I had to turn into their service.

At this point, the thought in my mind was "what the fuck is going on."

This is the reason:

From Boston.com: Due to what was termed a "router failure" at TBS headquarters in Atlanta, viewers all across America were unable to see the start of tonight's pivotal affair between the Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series. Media outlets and cable providers were flooded with calls demanding an explanation as viewers expecting to see the Sox and Rays fight for a trip to the World Series instead stumbled upon the aforementioned network sitcom.

Apparently, nobody was laughing.

Though TBS repaired the problem late in the first inning, viewers missed the first six batters of the game. The game started at 8:08 p.m., but the broadcast didn't begin until 8:28 p.m. By that point, Tampa Bay already had claimed a 1-0 lead courtesy of a colossal, solo home run by Rays center fielder B.J. Upton that struck the "C-ring" catwalk in left center field.

After TBS issued an apology and fairly generic statement during the game, Turner Sports director of public relations Jeff Pomeroy briefly took questions from reporters during the sixth inning of play. Pomeroy said that TBS suffered a failure of both "the main router and the backup router," the latter of which exists exclusively for such instances where the primary source fails.

Said the network statement: "Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped causing the master router and its backup -- which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound -- to shut down. This impacted our live feed from being distributed to any of the other networks in the Turner portfolio and caused the delay in our coverage. Both our primary and backup routers were impacted by this problem. We apologize to baseball fans for this mishap that caused a delay in our coverage."

Nice. Considering I had the TV on for 15 minutes before I even saw a warning is completely unacceptable and just makes me wonder if there are monkeys in the TBS network control room.

Down here in Maryland, I was pissed but was able to improvise for about 20 minutes before I got to see the game. Too bad everyone missed the B.J. Upton homer.

I could only imagine the scene in any bar within metropolitan Boston (especially) or Tampa-St. Petersburg for those who wanted to see their teams play.

TBS, you really fucked up on this one.

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