Posted in TV August 18th, 2007
Decisions, decisions
Now that it’s nearing the end of August and I can almost hear the crisp sounds of slapshots echoing through a rink, my mind wanders to the annual October question.
Do I go and splurge on DirecTV’s NHL package again?
If this was football, the answer would be a given. Sixteen games, each one delivered to my screen, no questions asked. But we’re talking the NHL package here. There’s no given that 3/5th of those games would be viewable in my area. As many of you know, I’m not from Boston. I’m from central NJ, in an area that’s inhabited by about 50% Flyers fans, 40% Rangers fans, and 10% Devils fans (those are the younger ones who had a third team to pick from and a decent bandwagon to hop on). If I lived out in Montana, I’d probably get about 60-70 games. But because I live in central NJ, I have to abide by the blackout rules imposed by the local teams. In my area, that’s the Flyers, Rangers, Devils and…believe it or not…the Islanders.
In addition to that, I had the NHL package two years ago and found out that I ALSO needed to subscribe to the local sports packages (like Fox Sports NY) in order to get the games…a double screw by DirecTV. However, that may have changed…I didn’t have the NHL package last year, but inexplicably had access to Fox Sports NY…possibly a change in their programming packaging (I know I didn’t intentionally purchase it).
But perhaps the worst of all, the simple fact is that I’m rarely home to be able to watch a game. I work nights and my shift is already well underway when the game begins. I tried TiVo’ing games last year, but it didn’t work. By the time I got home, I already knew the score and was too tired to stay up another 1.5 hours to sit through the game (at least I could shave a good hour off the game by just fast forwarding through the commercials and intermissions).
Sigh. I guess I’ll be relegated to another season of watching whatever games they show on Versus (and, if I’m lucky again, Fox Sports NY).
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 3:16 am and is filed under TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
