CENTER FIELD :: Sox & Yanks Get Heidi Treatment

« Gameday Open Thread: Yankees 4/12 | Main | Papi Gets His Beauty Rest »

Sox & Yanks Get Heidi Treatment

So we're all happily enjoying the ninth inning last night, freshly back from a (quite lengthy) rain delay. Jonathan Papelbon struck out A-Rod to end the top of the 8th, the Sox were retired in order 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 8th. Papelbon struck the first two batters he faced in the 9th, and is working on the final out of the game against Robinson Cano. Suddenly, without warning, all we see is this:

That's right, Sox (and Yanks) fans: we all got HEIDI'D.

Even worse than getting rickrolled, when a network makes a boneheaded decision to cut away abruptly and without notice from a crucial moment at the end of a sporting event it's a Heidi maneuver. The 1968 variety was a complete and total blackout; the 2008 version involved a bumbling switch that managed to annoy baseball and racing fans at the same time.

Rather than give the national viewing audience an informative heads-up, FOX decided to cut away mid-pitch from the final out of the Sox-Yankees game to show the Subway Fresh Fit 500 NASCAR race. There was no advance warning of the exact timing of the switch for the baseball fans who hung around through a 2 1/2 hour rain delay so they could see the end of the ballgame-- other than mentions that the game would also be shown on sister network F/X and the race start had been pushed back from 8:45 to 8:53.

After the switch and about 30 or 40 seconds into the NASCAR broadcast, the FOX race team finally mentioned that the Sox-Yanks game had indeed been dumped completely onto F/X. Lucky fans were able to scramble for the remote and locate F/X in the channel lineup in time to see Jonathan's last pitch cross the plate, and the 4-3 put-out... but a large percentage of fans were not so fortunate.

FOX didn't even bother to cut away in time to show the very beginning of the race (the cars were already going in to the 2nd lap). Even worse, shortly after cutting abruptly away to the very! important! race! (already in progress)... FOX went to a commercial break. It was so very crucial to FOX to show this race, they didn't deem it important enough to announce the switch was about to take place, didn't cut away in time to actually show the start of the race, and then quickly cut away from the race for commercials. Makes perfect sense.

HEIDI'D!

I'm not a NASCAR fan by any stretch of the imagination, but those folks deserved to see the start of their face. Baseball fans deserved to see the last out of the game they'd been tracking for almost 6 hours. FOX's decision to screw both sets of fans over is mind-boggling.

Tip for FOX: all you had to do was have your baseball broadcast team say, "In 60 seconds, we'll be cutting over to Phoenix to show the start of the NASCAR race as scheduled. The conclusion of this baseball game will be shown on F/X." This is not rocket science.

Comments (7)

[ Katherine ] says:
on April 13, 2008 6:09 PM

I missed the final pitch.

As soon as it cut away, I scrambled to find the remote, only to have the final score relayed to me less than a minute later. They missed the first lap anyway, yet FOX couldn't have held out for one last pitch? Ugh.

[ rachel ] says:
on April 13, 2008 6:16 PM

as much as i hate watching any games broadcast on fox, i did hear them mention, i believe right before the rain delay ended, that they would be simultaneously broadcasting the rest of the game on fx, so that when they showed the nascar game we would be able to see the rest of the sox game. then they apologized to all those hundreds of fx viewers saying that they would continue with Terminator 3 after the end of the sox game. granted i heard this and thought..."hmm fox didnt say WHEN exactly they were going to switch over and i dont want to miss any of the 9th inning...so why don't i switch over now, just in case they make the switch during a commercial or something and i wont know until nascar shows up randomly"...so i did and luckily didnt miss anything. sucks to hear though that they didnt warn everyone who might not have been in the room when they announced it the first time. i blame tim mccarver.

[ Texas Gal ] says:
on April 13, 2008 6:28 PM

You got it, rachel. Therein lies the problem: mentioning that a game would be simulcast when the majority of the fans aren't around to hear it, and then not announcing that the switch is about occur, is what caused the confusion.

Just say: "Switch to F/X now - we're cutting to NASCAR." Simple.

Or, better yet, they could have told viewers at the end of the 8th to switch to F/X, picked up the broadcast of the entire 9th inning from there without a hitch -- and then NASCAR fans would have seen the start of their race.

[ Katherine ] says:
on April 13, 2008 6:49 PM

I thought we'd get something more along the lines of "We're now switching to blah blah blah, turn to F/X to see the rest of the game..." instead the abrupt change.

[ Di ] says:
on April 13, 2008 7:37 PM

I freaked out! Especially becuase I didn't know what channel FX was on. I was ready to kill someone when the switch happened. The only time I heard them say anything about switching the channel was when the switch had already been made. I did get to see the end, thankfully.

[ jules ] says:
on April 13, 2008 7:46 PM

I had heard about the change, so found FX and clicked to it so I could use the previous channel button on my remote to jump to the game. I was upset because they didn't say anything. I flipped quickly, but wow, no warning.

I did email fox sports and got this response:

"Dear FOXSports.com Participant,
Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. We are aware that many individuals were displeased with the programming regarding the Yankees-Redsox MLB and Nascar coverage that interfered with each other. We would like to apologize for any displeasure that this caused as well as the inconvenience many of you had to deal with as a result.

We have forwarded your comments to the appropriate coverage department so that your voice can be heard. We value the opinion of all of our users and participants, and should we require any more information about this occurrence we will be sure to contact you. We appreciate your time and assistance, and thank you again for your feedback.
Thank you for using FOXSports.com
-- The FOXSports.com Feedback Team"

[ jules ] says:
on April 13, 2008 7:55 PM

PS: growing up in the SF Bay Area, I heard about The Heidi game more times than I can count!

online