NESN blocked by a technical foul

Recently it has been easy to extol the virtues of modern television technology. But technology is only great when it works.

NESN didn't show the end of Boston College's upset of No. 1-ranked North Carolina last Sunday night. With the Eagles up by 5 with 1:17 remaining, the game transmission was replaced by commercials. Although it's piling on at this point to scold NESN, it's clear the powers at the network will do everything in their power to prevent a repeat.

"There was a technical and communication issue on both sides, between us and the distributor [Fox SportsNet]," said Joel Feld, NESN's vice president of programming and executive producer. "They're the ones who produce and feed the games to us. There were multiple feeds of the game and there was an issue with one of the feeds, so we were directed to the backup feed. The technical communication issue is that once we were directed to the backup feed, we didn't know that the backup feed would ultimately get switched to the Virginia-Duke game at the time that game was going to start. We could've communicated better, they could've communicated better, and it was a very unfortunate situation."

Feld acknowledges the mistake was compounded by the network not informing viewers what was happening with a scroll or some other alert.

"That's where we could've communicated to our audience better," he said. "We didn't handle the situation as effectively as we could've. We obviously apologize to the viewers for not communicating to them.

"There are always safeguards in place, but sometimes those safeguards fail us," said Feld. "We've got to identify why the safeguards didn't kick in, or if there was an unusual situation that we couldn't, or didn't, anticipate and we need to work hard to rectify them. We did replay the game twice as a way to try to make up for what was a very unfortunate situation. We're very sensitive as to why people are upset."

NESN kicks off its Hockey East Friday Night schedule tonight with No. 9 Boston College against No. 10 Vermont at Gutterson Fieldhouse. The game, a rematch of last year's Hockey East championship, will be preceded at 6 p.m. by the premier of "25 Years of Hockey East - A Tradition of Excellence," a one-hour documentary . . . Hard to believe today is the 30th anniversary of the Bobby Orr number retirement ceremony during which No. 4 was raised to the rafters at Boston Garden prior to the Bruins' exhibition game against a team from the Soviet Union. The special event was originally aired on Channel 38 Jan. 9, 1979. NESN, for the first time, will reair the half-hour of festivities tomorrow night at 9 . . . Tune in to today's edition of "The Herd with Colin Cowherd" on ESPN radio at 12:10 p.m. to hear Patriot Rodney Harrison.

The NFL continues to rack up stellar ratings. According to Nielsen Media Research, the league boasts 13 of the top 15 most-watched TV shows during fall programming, with 225 million tuning in. On cable, ESPN's "Monday Night Football" represented 14 of the 15 most-watched shows, averaging 12 million viewers. NBC's Cowboys-Giants game Dec. 14 was the most-watched "Sunday Night Football" game ever, with 23.1 million tuning in . . . CBS will air the AFC playoffs with Tennessee hosting Baltimore tomorrow at 4:30 and Pittsburgh hosting San Diego Sunday at 4:30. CBS Sports's lead announcing team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms will call the Chargers-Steelers action from Heinz Field. Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf will call the Ravens-Titans game from LP Field. When asked about the possibility of a Baltimore-San Diego AFC Championship game, Simms said nothing would surprise him. "The four [teams] in the AFC all have tremendous components to their football team that give them a chance to be great," he said. "For the San Diego Chargers, their defense was borderline terrific against the Indianapolis Colts. But when I look at the San Diego Chargers, to go to the Super Bowl and win it, I just think that their offense has to be terrific. I probably wrote the Chargers off, no exaggeration, at least five times. I'll never forget when they were playing Kansas City that day and losing. Then they came back and won." . . . Longtime Globe tennis scribe Bud Collins, who began his TV career in 1963 with Channel 2, will once again be covering the majors for ESPN and The Tennis Channel beginning Jan. 19 at the Australian Open.

Nancy Marrapese-Burrell can be reached at marrapese@globe.com.