The Botched Baseball Broadcast: Behind the Scenes at Time Warner

Time Warner Cable's Manager of Public Affairs & Community Programming said Wednesday that several factors contributed to the problems that kept the Nebraska baseball game in Lincoln last Saturday from being broadcast live to Time Warner subscribers.

Ann Shrewsbury said problems began when Time Warner was not able to do any techical testing of its equipment compatability with Cox Communications until one hour before the game. Cox only recently secured the rights to carry Nebraska's home baseball broadcasts and make them available to other cable providers.

"Their (satellite) truck didn't arrive in Lincoln until Friday night," Shrewsbury said. "In the best of situations, we would be able to test our receivers and our equipment a day or two in advance."

Shrewsbury said Time Warner technicians eventually were able to downlink the digital signal just before the scheduled 12:05 p.m. start, but could not broadcast it to their own subscribers.

"The equipment we have needed authorization codes that nobody knew," she said. "We tried to troubleshoot it with Cox during the game. They had people from Cox and the truck on the phone during the game. We tried three different receivers. We were all trying to work together because it was in everyone's best interests to get the broadcast on the air."

Shrewsbury was at Time Warner's Lincoln headquarters when the broadcast from Haymarket Park was scheduled to begin. When it did not, calls began pouring in.

"I was in the customer service area monitoring our call volume," she said. "It steadily began rising from eight to 10 to 12. By the time of the first pitch, we had 58 calls on hold."

Shrewsbury said Time Warner dealt with each caller personally and that she spent several hours after the game returning calls to subscribers who had e-mailed her to complain about the broadcast not being shown.

Time Warner eventually did air the broadcast via tape delay Saturday night after an employee retrieved a DVD of the game from Cox at Hawks Field and brought it back to the company headquarters, she said.

Officials from Time Warner and Cox will meet Thursday to discuss the next Nebraska baseball broadcast, which is scheduled for April 14th against Texas A&M in Lincoln. Cox was also not without its problems during last Saturday's game. Video was split across the top and bottom parts of the screen for several innings because of a problem at master control, a Cox spokeswoman said.

"This a new way of doing this," Shrewsbury said. "It’s not something either of us has ever done. But we’re confident we’ll get the kinks worked out."