After a long rebuild in the wake of their 2018 World Series win, the Boston Red Sox finally appear ready to become regular contenders for the American League East pennant again.
Boston's signings, trades and extensions since the 2024-25 offseason, as well as a return to the postseason have reinvigorated fan interest in the team and it's shown at Fenway Park. Not all is perfect in Red Sox land, however.
The Red Sox fan account @redsoxstats on Twitter posed a question to its follower base: "What’s your niche complaint about the Red Sox that doesn’t have to do with ownership / spending / players that you wish was changed or rectified?"
The responses ranged from gripes with the recent loss of scouting talent in the organization to City Connect uniforms to the removal of the beloved Coke bottles from the light posts at Fenway Park. NESN, New England's local sports network and the home of most Red Sox broadcasts, was also a frequent subject of critique.
Many fans still haven't forgiven the Red Sox for parting ways with former announcer, Don Orsillo, which has changed perceptions of NESN's broadcasts for quite some time. This isn't a critique of Dave O'Brien, Tom Caron, Jahmai Webster or the rest of NESN's on-camera crew, but the technical quality of its broadcasts could absolutely be improved.
Red Sox fans express discontent with NESN broadcast quality, and they're right
NESN almost always cuts to commercial immediately after the third out of an inning, no matter how miraculous the ending play was. Garrett Crochet may strike out the side or Ceddanne Rafeala could make an outstanding, diving play in the outfield, and NESN will cut to commercial without showing a replay. Said replay isn't guaranteed to be shown at the start of the next inning, either. Some commercial breaks even last so long that the first pitch — sometimes the first out — of the next half-inning isn't aired.
NESN also has few camera angles for replays, particularly at the plate. Its center field camera angle that follows every pitch is one of the best in the league, but other top stations have more than just two cameras on each side of the plate to catch both lefty and righty swings. Other local sports stations have cameras behind the plate to catch pitcher and hitter replays and reactions, which NESN is sorely missing. Fenway is a unicorn of a park and it may be difficult to find places to add new camera angles, but a market as big as Boston should have more than two.
There have also been a number of technical difficulties with NESN broadcasts. In 2025 alone (all of these incidents were separate, one-time occurrences), broadcasts went black, announcer microphones didn't work, leaving only crowd noise as the broadcast audio, and score bugs were not always displayed or updated in a timely manner. No station's broadcast will be perfect every night, especially since there are so many baseball games in a season, but the Red Sox are in a big enough market and should be better equipped to handle such issues with haste.
Local sports TV stations across the country have come under threat, and have even closed down due to popularity streaming services, the price of operation and other circumstances. The Red Sox are one of the few teams lucky enough to have a locally-owned station covering them — the Yankees' YES Network, the Mets' SNY and the Dodgers' SportsNet LA come to mind as a few of the other local sports stations still in business. SNY is often heralded for its ample camera angles, fun editing style and graphics, to which other local station should aspire.
Eighty percent of NESN is owned by Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Red Sox. At the minimum, there should be room in the budget to add more cameras to make viewing replays and highlights a more enjoyable experience. The Red Sox are one of the biggest markets in MLB and it's recently started to show again in the product on the field at Fenway Park — it would be nice if that translated to the production value of the broadcast on screen, especially given the price of TV and streaming services these days.