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Comcast Fails To Deliver Center Ice Promises
by Mike Chen on 12/01/08 at 12:00 PM ET
Comments (8)
Some months ago, the Center Ice package opened up the Holy Grail of out-of-market hockey games. Previously, if your home team’s broadcast network wasn’t showing a game, the away team’s feed would still be blacked out. Why? Because even though there wasn’t a game to be shown on the local network, they still technically owned the rights to the game, and giving those away to the other network would be, in theory, bad for business.
Well, those hurdles were cleared and now fans could watch their home teams even if the game wasn’t scheduled to be televised on their local broadcaster. For example, the Sharks/Coyotes game over the weekend wasn’t broadcast on Comcast Sportsnet Bay Area but it was on FSN Arizona. In years past, Sharks fans couldn’t have seen the game at all, but thanks to the lift on blackouts, they could watch the game on Center Ice. Sharks broadcasts and advertising even mention this now when talking about game availability.
Sounds great, right? Well, sure, if you’re on DirecTV or Dish Network. But it turns out that some folks in California simply aren’t getting what they’re paying for with their Comcast cable subscription. Are you only getting half of the Center Ice channels you paid for? Then you’re not the only one.
A Bay Area reader alerted me to this thread on the Sharks message board. To summarize:
-Fans on Comcast who’ve paid for Center Ice aren’t necessarily getting all of the available channels. Comcast claims this is because of bandwidth issues.
-Bandwidth issues stem from Comcast purchasing many of the small cable companies in the area (when I was growing up, the local company was Heritage Cablevision) but failing to upgrade the hardware. Thus, while the channel world exploded into the hundreds, the overall capability did not.
-Instead of 20 channels for Center Ice and other sports packages, some hockey fans in the Bay Area only get 10.
-Center Ice’s schedule makers are doing two things that aren’t helping: 1) channels aren’t being re-used from early games to late games (that’s poor optimization of bandwidth 2) both home and away feed are usually being shown these days (that’s good in theory but it unfortunately winds up hurting what’s going on here)
Because of this, Sharks fans would have normally tuned in the game on the upper portion of the Center Ice channels like I did on DirecTV. However, these folks simply couldn’t because their Center Ice capacity didn’t go up to what was advertised.
This isn’t the fault of Center Ice. It’s the fault of Comcast for falsely advertising for the complete Center Ice package, then failing to deliver. According to the message board, people who demanded a refund credit of some kind got one. Still, that doesn’t help out the hockey fan that wants to have a complete selection of games on busy Saturdays.
If you’re experiencing this, whether in the Bay Area or beyond, there are a few things you can do:
1) First off, contact your cable provider and demand a credit. If you’re only getting 50% of potential Center Ice games, you should only have to pay for half of it.
2) Check out other services. I’ve had DirecTV since 2001 and I’ve never had a problem with it.
3) Complain to Comcast’s upper management about upgrading areas that don’t have the capacity for modern broadcast streams and threaten to jump ship to satellite. This won’t provide immediate results, but it will create a groundswell of demand which will hopefully point to a bigger-picture solution (don’t underestimate the threat of losing subscribers in today’s economy) and it might get you some credit on your account or free HBO or something.
4) Let other hockey fans in your area know about this. The more people that know, the better.
Filed in: NHL | Mike Chen's Hockey Blog | Permalink
Tags: Center+Ice, Comcast,
Comments
WOW. Comcast disapoints their customers, that’s a first. (rolls eyes)
Posted by Mike on 12/01/08 at 01:04 PM ET
Comcast blames a lot on a lack of bandwidth. The sky can only fall so many times before people stop listening to Chicken Little.
Posted by Alan from Atlanta on 12/01/08 at 01:49 PM ET
I dropped Comcast at the start of last season when they told me that CI was not offered in HD.
That was it for me, I told them you may not offer it, but others like Directv do.
Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 12/01/08 at 01:52 PM ET
I was appalled to find out that CI is offered in HD by DirectTV. I have had Comcast for the past 3 years and assumed that CI was not available in HD on any subscriber, but now I find out that it is with Direct TV. If I had known, I would have switched before the season started.
Posted by PDXWing from Portland, OR on 12/01/08 at 02:39 PM ET
Here’s the weird thing about all this: the games are always on even when the guide doesn’t have them listed. I’ve had arguments with Comcast about this and I think it’s BS. You can’t set a recording ahead of time because you don’t know which channel the game will be on. What you have to do is go to GAME10 and then go up channel by channel until you find the game you’re looking for but can’t find. It’s somewhere in those channels that say they don’t have anything on. I don’t know about the local Sharks blackout in the Bay Area but of the iNDemand daily schedule says they are on, even if there’s no channel listed, they are here in Boston. You just have to search for it at the time the game starts. There’s usually more than one game that gets relegated to the unlabeled channels just above GAME10.
Speaking of Comcast problems, there’s a GAMED channel further up that is supposed to show my “up to 7 games a week in HD!” that I get as part of the Center Ice package. They advertise this feature to death and yet I’ve never, not once, been able to watch a game on that channel because it always says that I am not authorized. I’ve put in complaints to both iNDemand and Comcast and no one seems to know or care about it. I feel screwed because I pay for a package and I’m not getting all the pieces. Anyone else have similar problems or suggestions on what I can do? I missed a game earlier this year when I set it to record the HD version and was left with 2.5 hours of black screen. Needless to say, I was not pleased.
Posted by Aaron from Boston on 12/01/08 at 11:54 PM ET
I just got this from Andrew Johnson at Comcast:
Ms. Pooks_Rutherford:
Your email sent Sunday to “7 On Your Side” was forwarded to my office this afternoon. We’ve looked into the issues you raised and have discovered the following:
Comcast SportsNet Bay Area had the rights to telecast this game but opted not to do so.
As you may be aware, CSN Bay Area’s agreement with the Sharks allows them to televise seventy games and our colleagues at CSN select which games will be included on their schedule.
Unfortunately, the Sharks/Coyotes game last Saturday was not selected.
CSN Bay Area did give Center Ice permission to telecast the game on their channels because they weren’t going to telecast it.
Unfortunately Center Ice placed the Sharks/Coyote game on one of the four Center Ice channels that we do not carry in the Bay Area.
We called Center Ice representatives this afternoon and Comcast has reached an agreement with NHL Center Ice to televise future Sharks games (not televised on CSN Bay Area or Versus) on Center Ice GAME 1 – 10 so that Sharks fans in the Bay Area can watch their favorite team in action.
Here is the schedule of future games. Check your local listings for information on the specific Center Ice channels where these games will be televised:
• 12/15 Sharks vs. Kings
12/17 Sharks vs. Blue Jackets
• 12/31 Sharks vs. Wild
• 1/10 Sharks vs. Canucks
• 3/12 Sharks vs. Blues
• 3/25 Sharks vs. Blackhawks
Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention.
Andrew C. Johnson
Regional Vice President, Communications
Comcast California
2500 Bates Avenue
Concord, CA 94520
The Sharks win against Toronto and I get this e-mail.
Life is good. 
Posted by Pooks Rutherford from Oakland on 12/03/08 at 03:55 AM ET
Not to sound like an HD snob, but you can get a 50” set at Costco for $700. In my mind, anyone not watching hockey in HD is INSANE. Likewise, Comcast (who should be taken to court on a class action lawsuit over this) is a joke and should be immediately dropped by ANY Sharks fan. If Comcast isn’t capable of giving it’s viewers basic (non HD) needs, DROP EM.
More importantly, everyone here that has made a gripe needs to contact Comcast and bitch. If you don’t, then nothing happens. Trust me on this one… internet means nothing. But actual customers calling/writing/emailing to complain means everything.
Posted by Greg from an Diego on 12/07/08 at 09:00 PM ET
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Mike Chen prides himself in being the only hockey writer integrating puck discussion with both Morrissey quotes and Star Wars references. Since 2004, he’s blogged about all things hockey and currently contributes to FoxSports.com, the Battle of California, and RotoRob.
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False Advertising as far as I am concerned. I have called and e-mailed Comcast. I am switching services as soon as my Center Ice subcription is over (as I have paid Comcast in full for this year’s CI).
Posted by Ann from Peninsula, CA on 12/01/08 at 12:06 PM ET