To sum up the title of this post, it’s easy. If you a Boston Red Sox fan and want to watch tonight’s interleague game against the Philadelphia Phillies and live in Connecticut, you can’t watch it on FOX.
Get the lube out because they are basically bending you over and giving it to you where the sun doesn’t shine as MLB on FOX has assigned the New York Yankees @ New York Mets game tonight at 7:10 p.m to the Connecticut market. FOX has three other games including the Red Sox/Phillies as well as the Detroit Tigers @ Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs @ Texas Rangers.
Map courtesy of The506.com
In case you wondering here’s how the map breaks down by market:
- Yankees/Mets (49%) – Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbus, Denver, Fort Myers, Greensboro, Greenville, Hartford, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Knoxville, Las Vegas, Memphis, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Orlando, Portland, Raleigh, Richmond, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Washington, West Palm Beach
- Cubs/Rangers (23%) – Austin, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Louisville, Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, St. Louis, Tulsa
- Tigers/Dodgers (17%) – Detroit, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego
- Red Sox/Phillies (10%) – Boston, Dayton, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
Over the past two years, when The Quinnipiac Poll has done it’s annual favorite MLB team, both the Red Sox and Yankees have been the favorite team of Connecticut. It usually breaks down that western CT is for the Yankees while eastern CT is for the Red Sox. I’m guessing that when they do it this year, it will favor the Yankees since they won the World Series in 2009.
We are such a small state that we only have one FOX affiliate, FOX 61. But if you live in New Haven county or Fairfield county, the cable providers there also give you FOX 5 from NY so you would have a choice of games if FOX 61 was assigned the Red Sox/Phillies game.
But since they have the Yankees/Mets game, Red Sox fans are left out in the cold. The bars likely won’t have it unless they can pick up a FOX feed from one of the markets assigned to the Red Sox game. MLB Extra Innings package isn’t showing the game and MLB.tv probably won’t have it either since they never show FOX games. And even if they did have it, we’d be blacked out from it since we are in the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets television markets.
The only thing we can do is complain to FOX 61 by lighting up their phone lines at 860-727-0082, fill up their fax machine at 860-293-0178 or send them an email complaining.
The logical thing they could do is put the Red Sox/Phillies on the standard definition channel and put the Yankees/Mets on the HD channel. Or better yet, offer the game on F/X or their sister station in CT which is WTXX.
So unless something changes, I’ll be listening to the game with Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien on the Red Sox radio network.
