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Pens Broadcast Delay Compared to TV

P

pensfan5605

When the Pens are playing I usually listen to the games while I am at the gym. When I jump on a cross trainer there usually is a television tuned to Root for the game. Listening to the game and seeing what is actually happening at the game is an adventure. The radio broadcast is 15 seconds behind the game as shown through Comcast. Plays are long over, goals are scored, and I'm hearing Mike describe them long after they actually happened. Given the lag of getting the feed out to cable, I'm thinking the delay from the live game is more like 20 seconds.
The same thing happens with the Steelers broadcasts, although not quite the delay as the Pens. The radio is usually about 7 - 10 seconds behind either the Comcast or DIRECTV feeds. I can also pull the games through an over the air antenna when they are on a local channel. That difference is about 10 - 13 seconds behind the radio.
A couple years ago the radio and over the air TV broadcast were in sync, and the radio used to be ahead of the cable feed. Now it is anything but that.
What is Clear Channel pulling here with these delays and what are they hoping to accomplish by this?
 
I've noticed the same thing, but I don't think it's just Clear Channel.

Pirates on The Fan vs the video on Root; various basketball games (mostly Pitt or WVU) on the radio vs ESPN or one of the OTA broadcast networks.

Usually the radio lags the video, but occasionally it's reversed. Within any one game, the delay appears constant, but varies from game to game.

Sure plays heck with the old "turn down the sound and listen to Myron on the radio"...
 
pensfan5605 said:
When the Pens are playing I usually listen to the games while I am at the gym. When I jump on a cross trainer there usually is a television tuned to Root for the game. Listening to the game and seeing what is actually happening at the game is an adventure. The radio broadcast is 15 seconds behind the game as shown through Comcast. Plays are long over, goals are scored, and I'm hearing Mike describe them long after they actually happened. Given the lag of getting the feed out to cable, I'm thinking the delay from the live game is more like 20 seconds.
The same thing happens with the Steelers broadcasts, although not quite the delay as the Pens. The radio is usually about 7 - 10 seconds behind either the Comcast or DIRECTV feeds. I can also pull the games through an over the air antenna when they are on a local channel. That difference is about 10 - 13 seconds behind the radio.
A couple years ago the radio and over the air TV broadcast were in sync, and the radio used to be ahead of the cable feed. Now it is anything but that.
What is Clear Channel pulling here with these delays and what are they hoping to accomplish by this?
Click to expand...

The delay is to protect against profanity going out over the air. What they are hoping to accomplish is to protect themselves against FCC fines.

Why it's as long as it is... Possibly the network is delaying it and then the local station is delaying it again. Unnecessarily redundant but probably what they are doing.
 
I can see maybe a slight delay, but 15 - 20 seconds is totally unnecessary. It's like a slowdown to add a few more commercials. I still think CC and maybe CBS has other motives other than bad words. For a long time as someone mentioned the turn your sound down and listen to the radio was pushed. Now doing that is can make you crazy, especially with hockey.



Parttimer said:

The delay is to protect against profanity going out over the air. What they are hoping to accomplish is to protect themselves against FCC fines.

Why it's as long as it is... Possibly the network is delaying it and then the local station is delaying it again. Unnecessarily redundant but probably what they are doing.
Click to expand...
 
pensfan5605 said:
I still think CC and maybe CBS has other motives other than bad words.
Click to expand...

Political correspondent Jeff Greenfield had a great line: "I never believe conspiracy theories, incompetence always explains so much more."
 
In HD radio transmission plants, the analog audio is delayed about 8-secs to get in in-time with the HD audio. Combine that with a possible profanity delay of, say, 7-seconds, and you get 15-secs.
-D
 
Why does the HD analog conversion for radio take that long? If I'm in 2 different rooms with a standard def TV and an HD , the broadcast difference is only about 2 - 3 seconds. The profanity thing is crazy too. The TV announcers aren't on that kind of delay from what I can tell based on my over the air TV signal. Why does CC have to drag it out so long. They didn't do this a couple years ago. There is something else behind it.



dtube1 said:
In HD radio transmission plants, the analog audio is delayed about 8-secs to get in in-time with the HD audio. Combine that with a possible profanity delay of, say, 7-seconds, and you get 15-secs.
-D
Click to expand...
 
He's right, it does take that long. HD receivers build a buffer so that the audio suffers fewer interruptions if the signal is disrupted. Otherwise it would have lots of dropouts like cellphones do. Most satellite receivers work the same way.

No conspiracy, just technology....
 
Given that The X airs phone calls during regular programming and they take calls on the Pens postgame show, they might keep the station in delay all the time.
 
Anymore, you have to start watching the hockey game, wait for a noteworthy event, then DVR-pause the game until the radio audio catches up. Then, if you're ADHD like me, you mess it all up during the first commercial break when you switchover to VH1 Classic to watch a couple minutes of "That Metal Show"...
-D
 
loeper said:
Thanks, I will try that since I love listening to Mike Lang but still want to watch the game.
Click to expand...
I know this is a little different, but here in EPA, on my DirecTV, I have to stop it about a minute so Mike and Phil catch up on the radio side while listening on iHeartradio. Again, I'm aware that's because of the delay in iheartradio, but I've often wondered why it's behind that much.
 
Last Saturday night, things were reversed.

The Pirates were on MLB Network, since the Penguins were playing at the same time on Root. On the radio, the Pirates were on 93.7 as usual.

And the radio was leading the TV, by about 4-5 seconds. That actually worked pretty well. I could watch the Pens and listen to the Pirates in the background. Whenever anything exciting happened in the Pirates game, I could flip the TV to baseball and catch the action "as it happened".
 
dB said:
Last Saturday night, things were reversed.

The Pirates were on MLB Network, since the Penguins were playing at the same time on Root. On the radio, the Pirates were on 93.7 as usual.

And the radio was leading the TV, by about 4-5 seconds. That actually worked pretty well. I could watch the Pens and listen to the Pirates in the background. Whenever anything exciting happened in the Pirates game, I could flip the TV to baseball and catch the action "as it happened".
Click to expand...

Extra satellite hops to put the game on MLB Network....
 
The delay on Pens radio broadcasts is working out for me so far, I have the radio turned on but sound muted watching the games on TV, when the Pens score I reach over to un-mute radio and hear Mike Lange's goal call and Bourque's analysis.

Unforunately I've learned to accept Steigy and Errey, for better or worse.

Someone needs to give Steigerwald his own one hour radio show, maybe that way he'll get all the tangential conversation out of his system and not let it dominate his game calls..
Bourque does a two hour show once a week (when team schedule allows) on 970 with a few Pens players (usually 3rd or 4th line grinders), why can't Steigy join them?


Bourque by the way is quietly become one of the best analyst in town, he always explains perfectly exactly what is going on and why, especially important in a game like hockey where so much that goes on with opposing players is according to "the code" and traditional unwritten hockey rules.
That 970 shows needs to be promoted more and replayed on their HD station, it is a gem.
 
Just use the TuneIn radio app on your smartphone. Search pittsbirgh penguins and find a station that is broadcasting the game. Usually you want to pause it for 30-60 seconds and it will be synced up with the TV. That's what in do when I want to hear mike Lange.
 
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