Broadcasts Get a Lot of Static

Broadcasting baseball games on the Internet sounds good. Thanks to cyberspace, any radio broadcast can be picked up from anywhere.

For instance, a Boston Red Sox fan living in Los Angeles--or anywhere in the world--theoretically can listen to every Red Sox game.

For years, those with enough computer skills could find the baseball radio broadcasts, and they were free.

This season, major league baseball took control of those broadcasts and, along with RealNetworks, is marketing them through its Web site, MLB.com. A visitor to the site can click on “Audio,” find “Gameday Audio” and sign up for a season’s worth of games for $9.95.

The price is negligible, so there shouldn’t be any real complaints, right?

Wrong. Complaints have been pouring in ever since the season started. And having to pay for something that used to be free is one of the more minor complaints.

The major ones have been about everything from being unable to sign up for the service to being unable to get onto the site to poor quality of the broadcasts to having broadcasts interrupted in mid-game.

All one has to do is check out the message board in the “Fan Forum” section of MLB.com to find the complaints.

Some samples:

“Nice going MLB. Lousy service, no decent tech support and no recourse.”

“Is everyone having trouble with the audio? I haven’t been able to access the last two nights.”

“Anybody able to get a refund for this . . . service?”

“Once again, MLB, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to alienate fans--this time by charging for audio streaming.”

“I filed a complaint about this abysmal service a few days ago to the Better Business Bureau. I haven’t heard anything yet, but then again I haven’t heard from MLB.com either.”

The complaints aren’t falling on deaf ears. On Friday, MLB put out a toll-free number to call for help--(866) 800-1275.

To test it, the number was called at 2:10 p.m. Friday, and a message was left. The call was returned at 4:20.

Earlier, Bob Bowman, MLB’s CEO of advanced media, returned a reporter’s call.

“We know there have been problems,” he said. “Some have been ours, some have been caused by consumers who have done something wrong. For instance, we ask everyone to enter a password twice. Sometimes people think they have to enter a different password the second time.”

The reporter told Bowman he had been unsuccessful in attempts to sign up for the service. Bowman volunteered to help. But even with Bowman walking the reporter through the process, step by step, the attempt was unsuccessful.

“Maybe we should streamline things and make it easier to sign up,” he said. “But we have to make sure the customer really wants the service. We don’t want people signing up who don’t want the service. That would create huge problems.”

Bowman said some of the problems are simply with the Internet.

“If you’re on the Internet and you lose your connection, you simply sign on again,” he said. “When you’re listening to a ballgame and lose your connection, you’re going to miss something before you can sign on again.

“The site has been down a couple of times, but now, six weeks into the season, we think we’ve gotten some new legs. In one way, the complaints are good news. At least we know there are a lot of people out there interested in the service.”

Jim Gallagher, senior vice president of communications, said the number of complaints has been overblown.

“We have 120,000 subscribers. What, we had 200 people complain?” he said. “That’s not a lot when you look at the whole picture. On the other hand, our goal is to not have any complaints.”