Hello ESPN America and baseball

255762 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:27:00 GMT

Earlier this year something quite terrible happened. You probably heard. Due to budget constraints Five ended its long running coverage of baseball, but it turns out there was an upside to all of this.

If you ever watched Five's coverage it was quirky. It was hosted by TV presenter Jonny Gould and former GB baseball player Josh Chetwynd and aired around one in the morning.

Five aired it tucked away in its schedule with only chatlines for advertising company for a decade. And then suddenly it went.

All that left British baseball fans with was ESPN America (formerly the North American Sports Network or NASN, which was bought by Disney and rebranded earlier this year), but to get that you had to buy a bunch of channels from Setanta, which made for a slightly pricy option if all you wanted was baseball.

Then something else happened. Sad as it is Setanta went bust and up to the plate stepped Disney's ESPN, which last week acquired its first live English Premier League (EPL) TV rights in the UK and a presence on Freeview.

Better still ESPN America is now free on Sky with certain channel packs. Although confusingly it took a little while to realise this and Sky Customer support is officially Grade A stupid.

I saw on some website at the weekend that following Setanta's demise you could now add for very little ESPN America to you package. Awesome, I mean great, so I emailed Sky and here is what they told me:

Hi Gordon, Customer Account Number: xxxxx

Thanks for your e-mail about adding ESPN America to your entertainment package.

I'd like to advise that, ESPN America is a third party subscription and for the cost and subscription you need to directly contact them on their website www.setanta.com.

If you wish to remove Sky Sports Pack from your viewing subscription, please reply back to the same e-mail or you can contact our Customer Services.

I hope the information I have provided about ESPN America subscription and removing Sports Pack from your viewing subscription has helped with your enquiry. If you require any further assistance, you can respond to my email. You can also contact our Customer Services on 08442 41 41 41, where one of my colleague will be happy to help.

Thanks, Ahsan, Sky Help Centre

Hmm. Sorry Ahsan, but that was far from helpful. I mean don't they tell you anything at the Sky Help Centre, you know, so you can help customers? Apparently not.

Anyway, joke was on me. I then read somewhere else that ESPN America was now part of the News and Events package…which I already had. Errrm, bingo, there it was waiting for me to add it to my favourites. I realised this on Monday just in time to catch the third game of the Subway Series as the New York Yankees went on to beat the New York Mets 4-2 in what was a tightly fought close game with an emotional finish as closer Mariano Rivera went on to make his 500th career save. Awesome.

I'm looking forward to a summer of baseball and I have informed the guys at the Sky Help Centre where they too can find ESPN America: channel 417 on your Sky box. Whoever knew it went up that high?

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Hello ESPN America and baseball