Time Warner ‘sorry’ about ill-timed ad WZON to air 30 Husson games

As far as fans of the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and even the Boston Red Sox were concerned, this was a big strike against cable television.

There was no abrupt cut to the start of “Heidi” the movie Monday night, but a local commercial break for businesses such as The Sports Arena when a game was going on wasn’t any less frustrating.

Just before little-known Angels catcher Ryan Budde stepped to the plate with one out in the 10th inning of Monday’s late game against the Yankees, Time Warner cable systems in Maine and other areas interrupted ESPN2’s telecast to take a commercial break – while game action continued.

While local viewers watched spots for Sports Arena, Bangor Tickets and other local businesses, Budde hit a double to score Howie Kendrick from second with the winning run in Anaheim’s 7-6 win. When the ads ended, viewers were treated to the scene of the Angels celebrating a dramatic victory.

Oops.

“Basically it was an insert coordination error,” said Peter DeWitt, Time Warner New England division spokesperson. “We have a regional operations center out of state and we receive cue tones for commercial breaks. In that case, the tone was sent but it was sent in error at the wrong time, which was predetermined.”

In other words, the ad spots are preprogrammed to run at certain times with the expectation the 10 p.m. game would be over by 1 or 1:30 a.m. Fans burning the beyond-midnight oil were deprived of seeing the exciting finish at 2:11 a.m.

“Normally it’s on a timer at that point and even though the game was on, that fact wasn’t caught and the commercial break was taken anyway,” DeWitt explained. “This is the first time I’d been made aware of this happening. I talked to other staff members who hadn’t heard of this, either.”

Once he was aware of the problem, DeWitt and other Time Warner officials did some checking.

“We communicated to everyone, including ad sales staff, regional operations center personnel and our division engineering staff, that this is the situation and the problem, and we need to do a better job of coordinating these broadcasts to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” DeWitt said. “We want to apologize to the customers. We’re extremely sorry and we promise to stay on top of it.”

DeWitt invites customers to e-mail him directly at peter.dewitt@twcable.com if the problem recurs.

As far as preventing a repeat incident, steps are being taken.

“We have to make sure the operations center and our ad people are in constant communication and monitoring games to make sure we don’t have this kind of thing happen again,” he explained. “I think it’s going to come down to having people eyeball the games rather than only rely solely on the cue tones.”

Husson tunes into WZON

Husson College and Bangor all-sports radio station WZON have agreed on a one-year contract giving The Sports Zone exclusive broadcast rights to more than 30 Eagles sporting events.

WZON will also broadcast live shows and segments from Husson’s Bangor campus throughout the year, and team up with Husson on other projects including a sports speaker series as well as on-air and Internet promotions.

WZON will kick its coverage off with Husson’s Sept. 15 football game against Norwich University. It’s the first of five football broadcasts. WZON will also air a special homecoming segment prior to its broadcast of Husson’s Sept. 29 home game against Mount Ida College.

All Husson broadcasts by WZON will also be aired live on the Internet at zoneradio.com.

“This is a great partnership for the Husson community,” Husson athletic director and football coach Gabby Price said in a press release. “I don’t believe there are a lot of Division III schools with this type of partnership with a sports station.”

Jeff Solari will handle play-by-play for WZON’s Husson football broadcasts.

Andrew Neff can be reached at 990-8205, 1-800-310-8600 or at aneff@bangordailynews.net