From sublime to ridiculous

I'm certainly not the most patient person you'll ever meet, but I've tried to remain calm as the Mountain West Conference entered its new TV partnership with CSTV and Comcast.

My patience is wearing thin. And, given that I have access to CSTV, Versus and The mtn. because I have both DirecTV and Comcast at my house (I do write about TV for a living, after all), it's been a lot easier for me to remain calm than it has been for most fans.

But, c'mon, this is getting ridiculous!

Let's put aside for a moment all the distribution problems with The mtn. (And that's a huge issue all by itself.) People who have gone out of their way to subscribe to a cable system in order to receive the new Mountain West channel ought to be able to watch a game without technical glitch after technical glitch. And it might be nice if there was sound.

Let's put aside for a moment any question of production quality. (And that's a huge issue all by itself.) During last Saturday's BYU-San Diego State game, fans would have been better served by a single camera panning the field if the telecast had been glitch-free.

No one, of course, wants to take responsibility for this problem. CSTV says it is relying on Comcast. If you're a Comcast subscriber and you call a service representative, you're told that it's not the fault of the cable company, it's the fault of The mtn. itself.

Even if that's true, that's patently absurd. Comcast is the half-owner and operator of The mtn.

As we discussed here last week, we know that problems with the quality of the signal from Versus (another Comcast-owned channel) do not originate with Versus. The picture is crystal-clear on DirecTV, while some cable subscribers have complained of poor reception.

We have no way of knowing if that's also true of The mtn. because it's not available on satellite.

Obviously, technical problems happen to everyone. Remember the power-outage during the Utah-at-Wyoming game two years ago? That was an ABC telecast.

But if we're seeing this bad a signal this often, there's something wrong that's got to be fixed.

At this point, the MWC and its fans are stuck in this boat. We're going to have to make the best of it.

(Let me point out for the umpteenth time, even if the league had stuck with ESPN, it would not have been the same coverage as in the past. ESPN was offering less exposure at worse times for the same money.)