Where Is The Pistons Game Tonight?

Has this happened to you? I get home from work and begin to ponder that night's television viewing choices. After a cursory review, meaning I check the non-local stations for something that I might find interesting, I recall that the Detroit Pistons have a game that evening. It seems like clearly the best option, so off I head to Fox Sports Detroit. This is where the problems begin.

An evening with the Eastern Conference Champs and the best team in the league is hardly a bad night of tv, so let's check in on Fred McLeod and Greg Kelser. FSD is on channel 32 in my area. Three quick clicks on the old remote and I get.....poker. Hmmmm. Something's amiss here.

What time is it? 7:30? Their home games begin at 7:30, right? Are they on the road? No, I'm pretty sure they are at The Palace. Oh, that's right. They are probably on channel 20 tonight. I still can't get used to George Blaha on the WB. So, it's off to channel 20.

Commercial. Ok, let's grab something to eat during this lull. An appropriate, or inappropriate, snack now in hand, I return to find something other than the Pistons. Gilmore Girls, huh? Ok, I must be wrong. They must be on the road. Oh, wait a minute. It could be an ESPN game. Let's check that out.

The sports mega-station is channel 9 here. Darn national cable broadcasts trying to confuse me. Is this an ESPN coverage night? A flip over to nine reveals....more poker. I'm glad poker's most recent fifteen minutes is just about over. That's when I remember that most national games start at 8:00 p.m. Alright, then. I guess I'll check back in about a half an hour.

The 7:30 slot, now closer to 7:40, is spent flipping between channels--Fox Soccer Channel (of course), Weather Channel (cloudy, cold with a chance of snow until May), Food Network (I love that Paula Deen's cooking), BBC America and ESPNEWS (Tigers still not doing anything). Finally, eight o'clock arrives and I head back to ESPN. What do I find? Yes, poker is still on. Or something else, but sure isn't Pistons basketball. What is going on?

A quick couple of clicks reveals that the Pistons are still not on channels 32 or 20, either. Where else could this game......oh, that's right. TNT still broadcasts NBA games. Is it Thursday night on TNT and Wednesday night on ESPN? Or is it Tuesday/Thursday on TNT, Wednesday/Friday on ESPN? Or vice versa? Of course, sometimes the local coverage forces a national cable blackout. Yet, it wasn't on either FSD or WB. Wait, I'm thinking way too much. Who cares? Just change the channel.

What if it was it on TNT the entire time and I've missed a half an hour? That would be really stupid on my part. TNT, channel 31, pops up and Law & Order is on. Still no Pistons. I've got two poker tournaments, the Gilmore Girls and repeat number 7,326 of Law & Order, but not the local NBA team? Three thousand stations on my cable, including NBATV and I still can't see the best team in basketball? What gives?

That's when it hits me. Channel 4. Yes, Channel 4. The local NBC affiliate has been broadcasting Pistons games that fall between the cracks. Now, I don't know who or what determines when the Pistons end up on a station that doesn't show NBA games, but I had best check. Two clicks and lo' and behold, it's in the second quarter of the missing NBA contest. Great. It started at 7:30, but I just didn't choose the right network. Just great.

It takes me the better part of a half an hour and five stations to determine where the Pistons are this evening. Now, before I let myself off the hook, let me come clean. I own digital cable. I could have, at any point, searched the on screen options and found the precise time and channel for the game I was looking for. I also could have grabbed that day's newspaper, which contains a television guide, and see where the game was, too. I did neither.

Sure laziness was a major factor, however, to make myself feel better, I chalk it up to being old school. See, in the old days, back when I walked in two feet of snow, uphill both ways to and from school each day, the Pistons were on a single station-- Channel 50. Yeah, thirty years ago, CBS had the national television deal, but I cannot honestly recall a Pistons game on their network.

Obviously, things have changed mightly since then. As my prolonged search revealed, the Pistons can be on any of five stations and that doesn't include ABC which began their NBA coverage on Christmas Day. From here on out, I've got to check six networks to find the Pistons. That's quite a change for someone who can remember when the Pistons couldn't find a local radio partner and ended up on Canada's CKLW.

For an old school guy, who grew up with the local NBA team on a single television station, this having to "look up" to find out where the Pistons are going to be each night of the week, probably will never become comfortable. Old school may indeed be cool currently, but it isn't always terribly effective.