NESN360 App Customers Too Often Encounter More Problems Than Pitches

The Red Sox might make the playoffs. They probably won’t. But at least this much can be said about their 2024 team: They’re an athletic, united, resilient team that makes them a joy to watch more often than not.

Which makes it even more frustrating that NESN — particularly its standalone NESN360 app — too often interferes with the enjoyment of watching them with its apparent indifference to product quality and reliability.

The most egregious example occurred last Sunday, when NESN360 went out at the end of the Red Sox’s rather important game against the Orioles.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, with the Red Sox trailing 4-0, the broadcast began to revert to the first inning of an old game.

A second later, Red Sox pitcher Bailey Horn was on the mound during Sunday’s live game, trying to hold off the Orioles in that seventh inning. A few seconds later, it cut to the first inning of Friday’s game, with Orioles pitcher Corbin Burnes on the mound.

It continued to the point where it was impossible to watch, even if you had the game on in the background, like I did.

After receiving a deluge of complaints on social media and via email, I contacted a NESN spokesperson to ask if there was an explanation for what was happening.

Here’s the response: “We’ve experienced hardware issues that have affected some of our viewers. We apologize to our affected viewers as we work to ensure the best possible viewing experience for our fans.”

I shared this on social media and to those who emailed me. A few NESN viewers responded that this was the standard response they received—especially the part about ensuring “the best viewing experience for our fans”—every time they contacted the network to complain.

So I contacted customer service again to ask for a more detailed explanation of what happened, and found that I was hearing from a lot of angry NESN360 subscribers.

I have not received a response.

The issue didn’t occur during the linear broadcast (as in watching on cable). While the broadcast as a whole comes with its own frustrations (it’s absurd how often the rush to get to a commercial cuts off Dave O’Brien’s voice on live commentary as he tries to quickly wrap up an inning), the aforementioned “what game are we watching here?” issue was exclusive to NESN360.

And that’s a big part of the problem.

The app costs $29.99 per month. When it launched in 2022 as MLB’s first consumer-facing app, allowing fans in a given area to watch their local team’s games without the need for cable or a streaming service, I wrote that I thought the price was reasonable.

I was wrong. It’s not. It’s expensive, and at that price, NESN needs to do a lot more to satisfy its subscribers than it has so far.

NESN may say that it tries to provide the best viewing experience on NESN360. But last Sunday, we had the most striking example of this product that revealed something completely different to us.

A taste of the big leagues

It’s an odd juxtaposition here, I know, but NESN is doing something cool during Monday’s Red Sox broadcast that deserves praise: It’s giving a few promising prospects from the Red Sox farm system — in this case, broadcasters, not baseball players — a chance to get a taste of the big leagues.

As part of the Women’s Celebration Game at Fenway, Portland Sea Dogs commentators Emma Tiedemann and Rylee Pay will join O’Brien and analyst Kevin Youkilis in the booth for all nine innings.

Tiedemann, who has been calling the Sea Dogs’ games since 2020, and Pay, who is in his second season, will call the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds.

Giardi deserves better

One final thought on WEEI’s programming shakeup last week. I would have liked to see the station find a prominent role for Mike Giardi. Giardi, who was let go by the NFL Network in March 2023, is well-known locally from his time at NBC Sports Boston and New England Cable News. He worked for Greg Bedard’s Boston Sports Journal and contributed to Rich Shertenlieb’s new morning show on WZLX. Giardi deserves a bigger role in the market, and I’ve always liked him as a host since his time at 1510 The Zone, when he sometimes teamed with Bill Simmons and Michael Smith on a show that appealed to a much younger audience than WEEI was doing at the time.