Sports fans lose TSN alternate feed
Published Thursday August 14th, 2008
Sports Network says 'trial' for supplementary channel now over
Metro Moncton television sports fans are about to have their TV world rocked as Canada's most popular cable channel, The Sports Network, has yanked its alternate feed, which was used to broadcast popular sports events when the regular TSN channel was otherwise occupied.
That's bad news for those who fear they'll now be without coverage of favourite sports events.
The move is widely thought to be the precursor to a proposed new TSN2 station that would allow the all-sports network to air more sports, with more in-depth coverage, than they now can with the help of their alternate feed.
"With regards to TSN2, we do not have any official announcements at this time," TSN spokeswoman Andrea Goldstein says.
However, the death of the alternate feed is a sure thing, she adds, calling the alternate channel "a trial." Yet somewhat oddly, she also notes that it is still available to television service providers.
"While very successful, the trial period is now over. The TSN alternate feed remains available through digital television providers that choose to carry it."
And even more confusion reigns.
When avid NASCAR follower Jason LeBlanc of Shediac turned to the alternate feed for his regular racing fix on Sunday, as he always does, the race wasn't there.
"I called Star Choice and was told there was a problem showing this race, but that the races will all be on for the rest of the year after that one," LeBlanc said.
"I had to tape it instead the next day, when they showed it on tape delay. But who wants to watch a day-old race when the newspaper already told you who won?"
Bell TV had also listed the event as being available on TSN's alternative channel. However, it too was not available on Sunday in Metro Moncton.
Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo says simply that the satellite service was "unable to make the service available." He did not elaborate. However, he said yesterday the rest of the season will be broadcast on TSN, ABC and a specialized service that shows only NASCAR races.
It remains a mystery what will happen when subscribers of Canada's five largest digital TV services, which have all had the TSN alternate feed taken away from them, want to watch a certain sports event that is regularly broadcast in Canada only on TSN, only to find that something else is on and they no longer have access to TSN's alternate feed.
In the meantime, no one is saying much of anything about TSN2, which is rumoured to be announced within weeks. Where the network's second feed can now only be used to broadcast a few sports events that overlap already-scheduled coverage of other events on the main feed, presumably TSN2 would be an entirely separate channel.
LeBlanc isn't yet convinced that this is a good thing.
"They could charge you extra for the second channel, and then broadcast the same shows as they do on the regular TSN. They could force you to buy channels you don't want if you want to buy only TSN2."
Leblanc is also miffed about the fact the alternate feed is one of the reasons he bought the TSN service in the first place.
"There was no mention to me about it being only a trial period," he said.
Customer complaints can be directed to Simon Bassett at sbassett@tsn.ca.
None of TSN, Rogers Cable or Bell TV wished to address widespread rumours that TSN is withholding its alternate feed from them (as well as from Shaw and Videotron, accounting for all four of the largest digital television providers in Canada) in a bid to strongarm them into adding the TSN2 signal, though industry insiders have confirmed those rumours.
Those conspiracy theorists note that the alternate feed is still advertised by TSN as being available to subscribers of digital services Cogeco, SaskTel and Novus, which have not yet publicly announced if they have agreed to carry TSN2.
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http://tsn.ca/tsn2/story/?id=246287&lid=headline&lpos=topStory_main
Suddenly I found TSN - having secured the rights to this competition - showed Curling and Hockey instead. Perhaps understandable but for the fact that CBC was also showing it, so all they were doing was duplicating what was already available and not showing what they had already paid for.
For the last year or so, they provided the alternative channel and when the hockey/curling was on, the alternative channel still provided the live soccer. In fact when hockey and curling were not scheduled, TSN's channels BOTH supplied a different soccer game, thus increasing choice.
They are to be congratulated for that. It seems the 'new' second channel may be a further improvement. It's just a case of will it be available to as many, will it cost more and how much more?