WBCN & Patriots broadcasts: Any way around the 'seven second delay?'

[ChrisNH]

WBCN is a great station to listen to the Patriots on...except when you want to watch at home while you're doing that. The delay makes that impossible; who wants to hear Gil Santos explode in excitement about a touchdown that you saw seven seconds ago? I can't help but imagine the ratings boost the station could enjoy if the TV and radio were synchronized. WBCN is leaving a lot of $$$ on the table because of this--and they surely know it. I think I understand it is a FCC-mandated delay, which WBCN can do nothing about. Still, it's too bad that it exists at all.

 

[chitchatjf]

with a few second delay on the HD signal (which I would say more and more folks use to watch the games) I would say they only REAL way to do it today would be to have a DVR and take advantage of the buffer.

 

[Nizam]

Radio stations have tried to sync the audio up correctly, to no avail, because it depends on your cable provider/network station too,.

 

[Neggy]

The quick answer is no. Everytime the signal goes thru a process it gets slowed down.
assuming the announcers are calling the play at the same time, just think about all the signal processing on site, then the uplink, downlink, thru the studio.. out to the transmitter.. in the TV's case then thru the cable system... thru your cable box..... you get it. And that's non network.. add for network up and down a couple of times plus processing

And
7 seconds would be a short delay in this post Janet Jackson world. I was old it is delayed 7 seconds on site before it gets bounced of the bird, and another 7 at the network, and probably another 7 at the local. It would be fun to hav someone at a game, and have them tell you via cell phone when the pitch was thrown, ball snapped, pucked dropped, and count off till it happens on your TV. Cripes in the bar I hang out in, we have several big screen HDTV's (digital) and some analog sets and the delay between the 2 on the same game is a good 5 seconds.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

WBCN is a great station to listen to the Patriots on...except when you want to watch at home while you're doing that. The delay makes that impossible; who wants to hear Gil Santos explode in excitement about a touchdown that you saw seven seconds ago? I can't help but imagine the ratings boost the station could enjoy if the TV and radio were synchronized. WBCN is leaving a lot of $$$ on the table because of this--and they surely know it. I think I understand it is a FCC-mandated delay, which WBCN can do nothing about. Still, it's too bad that it exists at all.

The FCC doesn't mandate the use of a delay. Their only constraint is that you can't air indecent material or language. How the stations accomplish it is up to them. At sporting events, some have withdrawn their crowd mikes, which usually solves the problem. There's enough crowd noise in the announce booth to give the broadcast the proper ambiance.

WBCN doesn't lose so much as a penny because there's a signal delay. The sponsors don't care...and that's what counts.

After 2/17/2009, delay on TV will be a fact of life too. Digital signal paths, whether on radio or TV, introduce time delay. There is no way around it. Even operations which are fully analog at this point still have to contend with signal delay, because most paths between studio and transmitter are digital. The days when jocks were required to listen to the "air" position on their monitors and headphones are over, and stations are using alternative systems (silence sensors, carrier alarms) to monitor the air signals.

 

[rapking]

WBCN is ahead of my Cable TV . Crapcast Sucks !

 

[SportsDotCom]

Blame Janet Jackson & Boob Gate a few years ago in Houston.

 

[rapking]

Blame Janet Jackson & Boob Gate a few years ago in Houston.

And Slash(GnR ) on American Music Awards ,Back in the 80's .

 

[ChrisNH]

I think it does matter because WBCN, with no delay, could easily point to higher numbers and thus charge higher advertising fees. If that paradigm doesn't work, why even deal with the mess called a 'Ratings Book?'

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I think it does matter because WBCN, with no delay, could easily point to higher numbers and thus charge higher advertising fees. If that paradigm doesn't work, why even deal with the mess called a 'Ratings Book?'

No. It doesn't matter. The overwhelming majority of WBCN's audience doesn't realize there's a delay and couldn't care less. It doesn't affect their ratings and doesn't affect their ad rates. It's not realistic to think that the football audience, which listens only one day a week for four months out of the year, could affect the ratings.

 

[keyjock]

No there is no way around it. It is a CBS Radio MANDATE! Any live broadcast, that involves 'non-CBS' employees (such as a Patriots crowd, where as a mic may pick up some offensive language or an interview with a player, coach or anyone else etc.) must be in a delay. In fact, in every CBS Radio studio nationwide, there is some sort of a VERY NOTICABLE sign that indicates the a broadcast is NOT IN DELAY, that way, if a talent slips, CBS Radio, cannot be held responsible and it would be the talents sole responsibility to pay any associated fines, if it should ever arise.
Take notice if you go any of the OLDIES concerts this summer, when they broadcast pre-concert, it is in delay (the air sound being fed to the crowd on the Hatch Shell is the delay signal).

 

[webcastboy]

The FCC doesn't mandate the use of a delay.

Not entirely true. There is no mandate for profanity delays, true. But with WBCN (and many other FM's) close to 7 seconds of that delay is coming from the analog needing to be time-sync'd to the HD Radio audio, which is inherently delayed due to encoding/decoding delay. Note that this delay is not the same thing as the "buffering time" between when you tune to a station with HD and first you hear analog, and then about 4-6 seconds later it buffers up enough HD audio and it blends to the HD feed.

Anyways, while there's a real "delay" in the sense that HD Radio means the programming will never be less than 7 seconds behind real time...broadcasters essentially have to treat the HD Radio delay as "not there" since you can't use it to dump out in the case of a naughty cuss word. In other words, when you're listening to WBCN you're hearing about a half second delay from the ISDN link between Foxboro and Brighton (I'm assuming they use ISDN, but it's a good assumption), plus another X seconds of a profanity delay...probably 7 but maybe as much as 60...and then the 7 seconds of HD Radio delay.

In fact, you couldn't even measure the delay by a fan using a cellphone at the game because cellphones are usually delayed about a quarter of a second! j/k That is about the only way to know for sure. For example, I've noticed WBCN's delay is much more than Comcast's digital cable here in Boston, but I know from speaking to others in the suburbs that the delays on cable TV vary drastically. In some towns the cable TV feed is several seconds behind WBCN. There's just no way to "match it up" anymore unless the NFL demanded that all radio and TV affiliates agree to a specific delay...something like 120 seconds...to make sure that everyone could add an adjustable delay at some point in their air chain so they all delay equally.

Believe it or not...the NFL has been flexing their muscles quite a lot with broadcast affiliates as of late. If they decide the delay issue is important, you could well see this coming to pass. But I doubt the NFL will ever think it's that big a deal.