Transmission troubles interrupt radio broadcast of UH basketball game
ERIK SMITH / SPECIAL TO THE STAR-ADVERTISER
The UH bench in the first half of their matchup against the UC-Berkeley Golden Bears in the first round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament today.
Technical difficulties plagued the local radio broadcast of the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors men’s NCAA basketball game this morning on KKEA-AM 1420.
The station, known as ESPN 1420, had tapped in to the Integrated Services for Digital Network broadcast facilities at the Spokane, Wash., arena for the first-round tournament game. The so-called ISDN lines are intended to provide superior broadcast quality audio, “but we think the ISDN lines in the arena got overloaded, so (the system) kept failing,” said Mike Kelly, station president and general manager.
In the game, UH upset the UC-Berkeley Golden Bears, 77-66, to advance to the second round of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament for the first time in school history.
During the failures, the station switched to the Westwood One broadcast of the game, meaning fans still could hear the game, but without local commentary from KKEA morning man Bobby Curran and announcer and attorney Jeffrey Portnoy.
Technical difficulties also affected the beginning of the post-game show, but issues were straightened out in time for fans to call in for the program.
“We took care of it for Sunday’s game,” Kelly said, saying arrangements were being made for a different phone line. “We also brought in another engineer in Spokane who actually is familiar with all those lines,” and they will be tested again before Sunday, Kelly said.
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Saturday’s Wahine NCAA basketball game vs. UCLA from Anaheim will also be broadcast and streamed live via the radio station and its website, Kelly said.
6 responses to “Transmission troubles interrupt radio broadcast of UH basketball game”
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Are you kidding me? Curran and Portney are absolutely horrible as radio announcers. Horrible. They are as junk as 1420’s engineers. Thank goodness we got to listen to a professional broadcaster with the national feed.
Good that they fixed it for Sunday’s game, but we won’t need it because it’s a no work day and all the working people had to revert to their radio. I’ll be watching the televised version.
If the television option was not available then the third option would have been to follow the game on ESPN’s app for a smartphone.
Every game is covered, with a gamecast, which gives up to date scores, which is how I was following it, as seen in my first comment on Brian McInnis’ breaking sports news story.
I was typing in the scores on my comment as I was viewing it on ESPN gamecast, as I don’t have access to either a television or a radio.
ESPN suc*s. There is a CBS march Madness app for smartphones with real time tv coverage for all regions. just sign in to your carrier and poof, no radio or ESPN needed. Can’t say to much about the local ESPN announcers since I don’t listen to them much. But I guess they are doing the best they can.
No loss. Didn’t want to hear the loud mouth Curran anyway.
I would rather the national radio broadcasters instead….