The photo above is what many people saw for a number of minutes during the third quarter of the Fox broadcast of the Atlanta Falcons – Kansas City Chiefs game today. Some repeated transmission issues caused everything from pixelated pictures, to complete green-screens with no sound at all.
Not the best way for Fox to start the opening week of the 2012 NFL season.
During the first quarter of the game there were some minor freeze frames, one of them being just before Atlanta’s Julio Jones caught his first touchdown pass. That was followed by a complete freeze with about seven minutes remaining in the first quarter, when the picture essentially looked like stop-motion sequence.
The issues continued into the second quarter, and that’s when the lines at local Comcast, DirectTV and AT&T offices began to light up.
[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/AK8mile/status/244889681450397696"]
At the third quarter progressed, the feed seemed to get worse, finally ending up with a no picture, no sound green-screen. The oddity was that Fox broadcasters Thom Brennaman and Brian Billick, who were covering the game, never made mention of any technical difficulties or transmission problems. Generally play-by-play announcers, at the least, offer an apology to viewers.
While some fans vented their frustration through tweets cursing everyone from their own provider to Fox television, Falcons manager of digital media content Jay Adams, as always, put a humorous spin on things, tweeting that he had solved the signal problems with some assertive banging and a wrench.
[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/FalconsJAdams/status/244852732073238529"]
So far there has been no word from Fox or any television providers as to what caused the issues.
