No better way for Fox to capture the excitement of opening week than to botch the transmission of the Falcons-Chiefs game.
There were some minor freeze frames on the telecast with about nine minutes to go in the first quarter, just before Jones caught his first touchdown pass. Then there was a major freeze with about seven minutes on the first-quarter game clock with the picture intermittently jerking ahead to show a different frozen image.
The picture didn’t recover until the start of the second quarter. Or at least it was fine until there were lots of digital artifacts bleeding through the picture later in the half.
As you can imagine, fans online were very understanding about these technical problems.
“Wow. First NFL game of 2012. Nice job, Fox. Or Comcast.” Falcons65 complained on Jeff Schultz’s ajc.com blog.
Most fans reported problems with the Fox feed on Comcast though some providers also apparently also were affected. Fox play-by-play man Thom Brennaman never mentioned the technical difficulties during the relecast and Comcast’s phone lines were tied up all afternoon. Late Sunday night, a Comcast spokesman said by email that the problem originated at WAGA and wasn’t associated with Comcast.
