FRS

Yesterday the Red Sox played a double header and I quit listening to the game in the 5th inning. They were winning, but I couldn’t take the WEEI broadcast as the annoying gaps of silence had returned. I had kept the nice email from MLB.com customer support that said, “Good deal, keep us updated please!” after we had solved this very issue just a week ago, so I let them know I wasn’t happy again.

I don’t know if my email had anything to do with it, but when I checked in on the second game towards the end, the gaps were gone. And so far tonight they have not reappeared.

Last year on WEEI and on most MLB.com broadcasts this year you get silence between innings. But this year I get to hear the commercials. I don’t really mind too much as it makes you think you are really listening to the games on radio, not the internet. One of the commercials I hear a lot while listening to the Sox games on WEEI is, “Who do you call when your windshield’s busted? Call 1-800-54 GIANT! Giant Glass.”

Back on the 15th I complained here about my listening experience with WEEI and listening to the Red Sox baseball games. Go back and read it, I’ll wait. Ten days later isoxny left a comment on the post agreeing with me, he had the same complaint (probably found me via a google search.) That day I filled out another complaint form on MLB.com’s contact page with the same results, a quick flash back to the form page with no thanks page, so you didn’t know if anything really happened. And like before, no response.

Stirred to the point of aggravation by the 3rd inning tonight, I called the MLB.com customer support number. This time I gutted it out. I managed to stay on the line past the 10 minute mark of last time and finally after 25 minutes I actually got to speak to a person. Carlos was very nice and told me that they have had several complaints on this very issue and their (MLB.com) technicians and WEEI were working on correcting it. I asked if they had a timetable for fixing it and he said, “Give ’em about a week.” Although I didn’t tell Carlos, I thought, “Talk to ya on the 7th.”

I’m in my second season of listening to the Red Sox baseball game on the Internet. Something changed this year, the WEEI broadcast I get from MLB.com has got annoying sound gaps. Spots of silence between the calls from the announcers. When they are speaking, you hear them and the murmur of the crowd in the background, when they stop, nothing. It is very disconcerting. I wrote to the radio station via their contacts page:
As a transplanted New Englander and lifelong Red Sox fan imagine how overjoyed I was to realize I could listen to the Sox on the radio via the Internet. I listened to practically every game last year once I discovered Gameday Audio at MLB.com.

Try and imagine the pain, as tonight I an listening to WCBS…

Their response came quickly:
You’ll have to deal with MLB on that. We provide them with a clean feed. What they do with it, to be honest, we have no idea.

I appreciate your interest and am sorry you haven’t gotten the quality you’re looking for.

So to play the game, I wrote to MLB.com via their contact page. I quoted both the above emails and added more descriptions of my attempts to test and solve this on my own. When I hit submit, the screen flashed and I was right back on the contacts page with all the entry boxes blank. I wonder if they got my missive? I didn’t get directed to a conformation page…I’ll keep you posted.