From: Mamatha Devineni Ratnam Subject: Atlanta's ABC affiliate SUCKS!!!!! Organization: Post Office, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 29 NNTP-Posting-Host: po2.andrew.cmu.edu I knew, despite the lack of a full game telecast last week, it was still too much hockey for Atlanta. Atlanta's ABC has declined to pick up any playoff games till May9. And even when they show the games on MAy9 and May16, they will continue to skip the first half hour of the telecast. I know this is still a better situation compared to rest of Georgia, Alabama, etc., but it is still pretty annoying. At least in PIttsburgh, we had a network preemptionchannel which showed all netwoork shows prempted by the local affiliate. I asked them what their problem was. I told them that a local 1.9 rating was not that bad considering it was the first NHL game shown after a long time without much promotion. Besides, their syndicated programming in the afternoon is usually low rated. So what did they have to lose by showing NHL playoffs. She told me that they had contractual obligations. I asked her if golf was shown oin ABC, would contractual obligations come in the way. And how come contractual obligations didn't come in the way of last week's telecast? She then couldn't give me a coherent answer. Also, I added that Atlanta had one of the highest neutral site game attendances and that the demographics were good. I think ABC and other networks should begin to tie their high rated programs like Roseanne in with thier sports programming. I hope that everyone in Atlanta who reads this bboard calls WSB 2 and complain bitterlyt about this. Tell them you will stop watching their news telecasts since they seem to be very unprofessional in handling this situation. The lady did not seem to settle on a single reason. Sometimes, the reason is low ratings. Then another time, she says contractual obligations.