DirecTV Makes Fans Play ‘Heidi’ and Seek

It might not have been of the same magnitude, but what happened on DirecTV Thursday night is comparable to the “Heidi” game of 1968, when NBC cut away from a New York Jet-Oakland Raider game in the closing minutes to show the children’s movie.

Viewers watching the USA network’s coverage of the exciting U.S. Open match between Lleyton Hewitt and Andy Roddick on DirecTV were deprived of seeing the last game of the final set.

At 9:37 p.m.--12:37 a.m. in the East--Hewitt was leading, 5-4, in the final set of a match that lasted 3 hours 40 minutes. USA is contractually obligated to turn over the coverage to CBS at 12:37 EDT, after “Late Night With David Letterman,” because CBS has a half-hour Open highlight show at that time.

No problem for East Coast viewers. They were simply told to switch over to CBS for the conclusion. No problem for West Coast viewers on cable either. They got a separate West Coast feed from USA on which coverage of the match continued.

But DirecTV carries only USA’s East Coast feed. A DirecTV spokesman said it’s not economically feasible for the national satellite service to carry two USA feeds.

So when DirecTV viewers here were told to switch over to CBS at 9:37, they got an episode of “Big Brother.” On USA, DirecTV viewers got a rerun of the sitcom “Martin” instead of the conclusion of the Roddick-Hewitt match.

The last game of the final set, which Hewitt won with the help of a controversial line call, was never shown here in its entirety on CBS. The network put together a different highlight show for the West Coast that did not include full coverage of that game.