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FSN nearly had its own ‘Heidi’ moment
By JEFFREY FLANAGANThe Kansas City Star
T o Royals fans, it was the type of television glitch that simply should never happen.
During the late moments of the Royals’ dramatic 4-2 win on Saturday night, FSN Kansas City’s coverage of the game on local cable systems was abruptly switched to “Aussie Millions,” a show on poker. The switch came at 10 p.m. and lasted about seven minutes at a time the Royals were desperately trying to preserve the win.
It was an embarrassing moment for FSN Kansas City, which is in its first year of a long-term deal as the Royals’ television rights holder.
“It was a great come-from-behind win for the Royals, and we regret that fans missed some of the action,” FSN Kansas City general manager Jack Donovan said. “We apologize to the fans, and we’ll do everything we can to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.”
The problem, according to FSN Kansas City officials, was that a controller at the FSN Master Control center in Houston, which regulates almost all FSN’s regional programming, mistakenly clumped Kansas City viewers with Indiana viewers who were supposed to get the poker programming at 10 p.m. It took seven minutes before the controller determined he had switched from live game coverage in Kansas City.
This was not an error by local cable systems.
Of course, the one-hour-plus rain delay didn’t help matters because the game probably wouldn’t have gone past 10 p.m. when the controller made the error.
Still, no excuse. That controller has to be aware of rain delays, or made aware by FSN Kansas City officials that the Royals game may cut into other scheduled programming.
Can you imagine the uproar if a Chiefs game was switched to a poker tournament by CBS late in the fourth quarter?
“We will definitely be more conscious of this in the future,” promised FSN Kansas City media relations director Geoffrey Goldman.
Moose-headsI can see it now: When the day eventually comes that Royals No. 1 draft pick Mike Moustakas makes it to Kansas City, his fan club will be known as the Moose-heads.
Moustakas is struggling these days at Class A Burlington, but that didn’t deter some fans from Kansas City from making a recent trip to Iowa to see him play (he was hurt, though). Those fans came dressed in home-made T-shirts, with a picture of a moose in some tacos (get it? moose-tacos?).
“It’s awesome when you have people from Kansas City coming up here to see me play,” he told The Burlington Hawk Eye. “It’s a real honor.”
Boom-boom
See that pitching line from Jorge De La Rosa over the weekend? In his first start with the Rockies, the former Royal gave up nine hits and nine runs in four innings and walked three.
Now, that’s a guy who should have been punching doors.