Starting next fall, Detroit will have something rare in America — one radio home for all four of its major professional sports teams.
The Pistons signed a five-year deal Thursday to join the Tigers, Red Wings and Lions on CBS-owned WXYT-FM (97.1) next season. It’s likely the first time all four teams have joined the same station.
This can't be good news for me. I already have enough trouble with Detroit Red Wings games conflicting with American football games.
It'd be nice if NHL.com was a viable alternative to listening to 97.1 on iTunes like it had been for years. But the League's website has greatly deteriorated this year as pointed out in this nearly month old article at mlive.com, Critiquing the NHL's digital revolution.
The NHL's website is so overloaded with Flash programming and nesting of stories that's lost its tactile "feel," courtesy of the elimination of the "right click."
1. You can't right-click on images to save them, "Frozen Moments" included;
2. The "headline" image usually links readers to two or three (and sometimes four) stories, and you can't right-click to open all three stories in browser "tabs" (nor are the stories usually linked to each other via cross-referencing links in each story);
3. When you play a video embedded in its front page stories, you cannot "share" the video (no menu to "share" or "embed" the video exists on the front page), and if you attempt to do so, the website refers you to NHL.TV's main page, which usually requires you to search for two or three minutes to find the video;
4. And the league's features and headlines are not archived in a, "view past columns/features" format. You have to scroll through oodles of headlines on a day-by-day basis, knowing that feature X appears on day Y if you want to find the previous column written by a particular author or a previous "notebook" or feature from the previous week.
My post there:
I've read many complaints about the new ESPN site. It doesn't bother me. Some have even complained about load speed, again doesn't bother me.
The new NHL site bothers me. It's load speed is ridiculously slow compared to ESPN's. Believe me I wish it was the other way around.
NHL's GameCenter is a joke in my opinion. Again slow. Very, very slow. I've tried at work and on my home computer using various browsers and various ways in which to connect to the Internet.
The fan connect site is horribly designed from an end user point view. It's so bad I've stopped visiting and blogging there, and as a passionate fan I wanted to connect with other NHL fans. Sadly I don't anymore because it's just too cumbersome from a navigation point of view and a blogging point of view.
Many a time I've tried to just wanted to listen to games, and I can't. For whatever reason the audio doesn't work. When the NHL showed games live, the feed is choppy. It's just not worth watching. There's no way I'd pay for Center Ice Online. No way!
I've submitted my complaints and bugs a few times. Nothing is done and no personal response, just automated ones. Though I did receive a response about the fan connect site.
Before this season I visited the NHL site daily, multiple times daily. Now I only typically visit on Red Wings game days so I can view the game summary. Now I get most of my hockey news from other sources. Last season I religiously watched the highlights online. Now I don't. It's depressing to me as an NHL fan how far that site has dropped in my opinion. It was one of the best, now it's one of the worst.
I noticed the problems listening to games earlier this year, Two Nights, and last year, Listening Live.
I've been listening to Red Wing games online since 1999. While I love the NHL broadcasts these games for free, like no other league that I'm aware, if fans can't listen to them for whatever reason, what's the point?
Also there have been times where I can't even log into NHL Connect.
I'm so done with that site. The log in info should be in the upper left hand corner, but it's not! This isn't a one-time occurrence; that happened several times to me.
As a side note, I had the unfortunate experience of viewing ESPN's SportsCenter today for 45 minutes. Not one NHL highlight. NOT ONE!
Seven games and not one highlight. People who think ESPN is objective are delusional. People who think that things would change if the League went back to the four-letter network are delusional. It won't happen because the Disney networks don't want the NHL. They had a chance to get the League back immediately following the lockout, but didn't. Nothing I've seen has changed.
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