AUGUSTA – Baseball fans in Norway, Paris, Buckfield and Waterford were taken aback Wednesday night when the Red Sox-Yankees playoff game was not on their cable system.
On Thursday, Adelphia’s Cathy Hounsell apologized but said the decision was out of the local cable company’s control. The problem, she said, was with the Fox television network.
Viewing the game in those areas by cable was impossible, according to Hounsell, because the signal was not available.
Both League Championship Series games were played at the same time. Fox – the network covering both games Wednesday night – made the Chicago Cubs-Florida Marlins game the one it would broadcast nationally.
The Fox FX channel was responsible for delivering the Red Sox-Yankees regional feed. Instead, it too broadcast the Cubs-Marlins game.
On Thursday FX issued an apology in the Northeast for not carrying the Red Sox game, Hounsell said.
“Customers don’t understand that cable does not control the programming,” said Hounsell, Adelphia area manager for central and southern Maine.
Bob Dixon, a Norway man who called the Sun Journal when he couldn’t get the game Wednesday night, was much happier on Thursday. He was watching the Sox game at his home and had received a telephone call from Adelphia representatives earlier in the day.
“They apologized profusely,” Dixon said. “They said it won’t happen again.”
Hounsell said the problem affected about 3 percent of the 105,000-household viewing area in her region.
Other viewers in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties were able to watch the Red Sox-Yankees game because it was carried on Fox 23 out of Portland, another source of the regional broadcast.
Because of terrain, distance and mountains, the “head-end” in Norway and Buckfield – where the TV signals are received and fed to cable customers – can’t pick up the Portland signal, she said.
The head-end in Norway also feeds Paris and Waterford.
“We have a solution that we have been working on for some time,” Hounsell said. “Adelphia has spent a lot of money upgrading facilities in Maine since 1999, and one of the projects is the upgrading of the Norway system.”
She said the Norway head-end will be updated by the end of the year, and Buckfield will follow after that.
Hounsell added that Wednesday’s game was the only time during the remainder of the playoffs that the games would conflict.
jsmedley@sunjournal.com
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