By David Scott
Boston Sports Media

- Split screen a splitting headache during Saturday’s Sox-Yanks!

- FOX Spokesperson tells Shots: “If the argument is, ‘Why not make the (individual game) boxes the same size?’, then that’s a fair argument and something we’ll have to consider in the future. We’ll certainly look into it.”

The bitter got downright venomous during Saturday’s sometimes infuriating FOX broadcast of the Red Sox/Yankees tilt (shown locally on WFXT 25).

Message boards like the ones at Boston Sports Media and Sons of Sam Horn were filled with anti-Fox postings condemning the network’s repeated use of a split screen to show both the Sox/Yanks and Cleveland/Chicago games.

The technique – most popularly used during CBS’s NCAA Tournament coverage in March – proved to both baffle and frustrate the region’s viewers. Adding to the angst was the fact that Chicago/Cleveland contest’s coverage was given a “bigger box” (with audio from the Cleveland game as well), relegating the Sox game to a smaller, lower right portion of the screen position with no sound.

Shots spoke at length on Saturday night with FOX Sport’s Los Angeles-based VP of Communications, Dan Bell regarding the coverage and the network’s thought process on the use of the split screen.

“We had said during the whole week that we would do our coverage in a number of ways, including live look-ins and a (real-time) scoreboard,” said Bell who admitted to receiving a combination of 20 email and phone complaints. “The last thing we wanted to do was upset viewers, but we also wanted to provide the constant update of what was going on in Cleveland – a game that had ramifications for both the Red Sox and the Yankees.”

(Shots left a message for local affiliate, FOX 25 spokesperson Maggie Hennessey-Ness to gauge viewer response, outrage and calls to the station, but our 5 p.m. voice mail was not returned as of 10 p.m. Saturday night.)

Interestingly, FOX play-by-play man, Joe Buck had said earlier in the week: “I think it’s great for regular-season baseball that a game of this magnitude has presented itself,” said Buck, who called Saturday’s game with (fading and faded) Tim McCarver. “I’ve been calling the ‘Game of the Week’ for 10 years now on FOX, and I don’t know if we’ve had one that means as much as this Yankees-Red Sox match-up on Saturday.”

That sentiment was evidently not shared by FOX producers on Saturday. At one point a member of the Shots (Outdoor) Viewing Party (at My Buddy Paulie Brookline’s shanty) asked: “Maybe it’s a technical glitch. They can’t get back to our game.” (Similar to the ABC/ESPN switching issue on its doubleheader night a couple of weeks back.)

When the Bart Simpson Sympathizers used the split approach again a bit later on, that excuse wafted in the air with the sweet, fall ocean breeze. And even Percy the Dog knew something was amiss. So he chomped another tennis ball in half.

Predictably, local viewers (at least the ones with message board access) were livid during the two o’clock hour, when the first of two extended split screens took place. Even Eric Wilbur of Boston.com submitted a critique from the Fenway Press Box where he was blogging the game: “So, how you all enjoying that Cleveland-Chicago game on TV? Way to go, Fox,” Wilbur deadpanned.

FOX’s spokesman, Bell, said Sox-Yankees was sent to 75 percent of the nation with the Cleveland-Chicago game going to 12 percent. “At the end of the day, you try and serve the most viewers and we thought by providing both games at the same time, to a huge audience (almost 90 percent of the viewing audience combined), we were doing that.”

Maybe - but Boston and New York are two markets that can support a game like that on its own - never mind worrying if college football quadrants will tune in. With technology where it is currently, it’s almost comical that we’re even discussing such problems. The control over what we watch and how is on its way to being ENTIRELY in our own hands. Until then, we have “glitches” such as this.

Bell, to his credit, was willing to admit that perhaps it would have made more sense to make the Sox game the dominant box or give both games equal portions of the screen. He further agreed that the audio could have remained with the telecast of local interest, in Boston’s case, the Fenway game.

“This is what makes Boston such a great sports town – the passion that these fans have for their team,” said Bell. “If the argument is, ‘Why not make the boxes the same size?’, then that’s a fair argument and something we’ll have to consider in the future. We’ll certainly look into it.”

As far as other snafus during the telecast (including missing the swing on David Ortiz’s third inning, lead-off double) Bell said, “The fault lies with us if we get back late (from a break).”

(Asked if any of the emails or calls he received were regarding the “Everybody Hurts - REM” anguished, fan montage, Bell said that indeed, most of the complaints were regarding the split screen.)

Clearly, FOX overestimated the actual pitch-by-pitch, Boston-area (and NY), interest in the Cleveland game and could have just as easily satiated this market’s viewers with a real-time score update and look-ins at other key moments from Jacobs Field. The look-ins, however should have been just that – and not been allowed to take away from the main attraction of Sox-Yanks.

It’s a tough lesson to learn under such magnified attention, but the nets have always walked a fine line when trying to please all viewers, and serve all masters every where; but we sensed that even Bell realized this particular manner of multi-game delivery needs to be tweaked.

They screwed up, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again somewhere, some day.

It’s reminiscent of the complaints CBS hears every first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. However they have been able to almost entirely eliminate the issue through the package offered for ALL Tourney game coverage.

One other possibility for FOX, if they truly believed so much in the Cleveland game, would have been to put it on sister network, FX, a tactic sometimes employed during late-season, game-of-import coverage. From 1-4 on Saturday it could have replaced “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” and “Marked for Death” with Steven Seagal. No big losses on viewership there.

Lastly, the split screen shenanigans were clearly magnified here in Boston and that was in no small part due to the fact that by the time the game was three innings old, the Sox were down 6-2 and Randy Johnson was rolling.

Angry winning fans are one thing, but angry losing fans? That’s a bird of a whole different plumage. Here’s a sampling of some of the web’s angry posters’ comments at BSMW and SoSH, as well as throughout the web universe:

• This is infuriating! The box with the freakin’ announcers’ names is bigger than the Sox screen. I cannot believe they are pulling this crap on us.
this is @!&%ing preposterous (sic). i can’t even watch the @!&%nig sox game WTF!!!!

• I dont really want to watch the Cleveland game an occasional score is fine

• Seriously WTF? We’re missing the @!&%ing game. WTF are they thinking. Stop it now

• I hate when they pull this split screen crap! I hate FOX!!!!!!

• Are you @!&%ing kidding me? Picture in picture? Fox couldn’t be more out of touch.

• When you do the F^&*ing splitscreen at least give the bigger box to the Sox game.

• Blogger Alex Nunez of the Noonz Wire had this to say: “There is not one person outside of Cleveland who wants to actually watch the Indians/White Sox game. Not one. Not when the Yankees are playing the Red Sox for all the cookies.
So spare us the incredibly terrible FOX WATCH split screen that reduces the Yankees/BoSox game down to a postage stamp in the lower right corner of the screen, with no Yankee audio (even though I should probably thank you for sparing me from the inane commentary of Joe Buck) in favor of the Indians/ChiSox game.
Chicago clinched. Cleveland’s hunt for the Wild Card is interesting, and their performance matters to us Yankee and Red Sox fans, but that doesn’t mean we want to see that game. I’m not interested in watching the Indians game being called by your “B-list” broadcast team, OK? Jake Westbrook could be throwing a perfect game for Cleveland and I wouldn’t care.
Let us watch the Yankees and Red Sox, and just flash the Indians score. God, this isn’t difficult.”

• A poster at the National Review Online wrote this around 3:30 p.m.: “I am starting to hate Fox. They have the Yanks and the Red Sox, the greatest rivalry in sports, tied for first with two games to go against each other, and they keep putting it in a teeny box on the bottom right of the screen so they can show what’s going on in Indians -v- White Sox. I know that’s an important game, and I assume it is being shown as the main game in the Cleveland and Chicago markets. But I want to watch the Yanks and the Sox. They can give me scoring updates in the other game, but I don’t want a split screen where I’m supposed to try to watch both at the same time. As a fan who loves baseball but doesn’t root for the Yanks or the Sox, I find it annoying. If I were a Yankee or Red Sox fan, I think I’d be about ready to kill somebody.”

• Steve Lombardi at www.waswatching.com said this: “. . . Lastly, shame on FOX with their “FOX Watch” in the bottom of the 4th today - causing Yankees and Red Sox fans to squint to watch the whole half-inning (including Sheffield’s great catch). . .

• In other weekend news and notes:
Shots left a message for Ted Sarandis at his still-operating WEEI 850 AM voice mail on Saturday in an effort to get his side of the break-up with ‘EEI. Sarandis has yet to return our call, but one good indicator of the impasse the two sides wound up at: ‘EEI tried to bury the news of “Ted Nation’s” removal with a “bury-the-news” release on Friday afternoon BEFORE the biggest baseball series of the season. It’s an old PR trick and one that ‘EEI should be ashamed of themselves for using. . . Sarandis’s departure could open the door for John Wallach, who has been rumored for months to be getting a more prominent role at 850. . .Shots preference would be for Mike Adams to get the gig. . . Don’t be surprised if Sarandis’s name comes up over at ESPN Radio Boston 890 AM – his loyal following and instant name recognition might be a good fit for the fledgling station. . . Speaking of 890 – be sure to tune into “The Drive” with Mike Felger on Monday afternoon when recent Shots in-depth subject, Bill Simmons, is scheduled to be a guest. You’ll recall that Simmons took a semi-swipe at Felger for his supposed JJ Foley rendezvous with former Herald Sports Editor, Mark Torpey. Felger pretty much dodged the issue when contacted by Shots, replying via email: “Who am I to comment on some one else’s feelings towards the Herald?…..I think it’s a decent place and we’ve hung in there well – but that’s me….As for having a beer with the boss and laughing at his jokes – this is America, isn’t it?…The most important thing for you to point out is that Bill is scheduled to be on my show this Monday, Oct. 3….Again, that’s AM-890, ESPN Radio.”

How’s that for turning around a question and making it a promo. Felgie’s got spunk – you gotta give him that. . .Despite this special, bonus, extra, weekend edition of Shots, we’ll still plan on getting a Sports Guy post mortem up for Wednesday, along with (and in conjunction with) another edition of the world famous, PodShots.