Hockey fans, Time Warner knows -- and they're working on it

Hockey fan and reader Karl Brooks writes:

Aaron, I was wondering if you have a contact at TWC KC to get their cable box channel guide corrected? The FSN KC channel 59 & 1059 never has the correct info on it for instance last night it showed 59 having the Best Dam Sport Show and 1059 had Off Air listed. In reality they were televising St. Louis Blues vs. Minnesota Wild on 59 & 1059 in HD but the guide did not? Any hockey fans wouldn’t know it or tune to it; for the last couple of months I just randomly check or look at the St Louis Blues website on when they are playing and then tune at that time. (you shouldn’t have to do that)

Also the NHL Center Ice channels 487-500 still shows the MLB symbol as well as "NHL/MLB 1" through to "NHL/MLB 14" on the tabs. They need to delete the MLB so the channel label would be exposed on the left hand side of the page. Right now all you see on the left side is NHL/MLB and makes it difficult to quickly go to the channel when you look at the page schedule where it illustrates the game channels as "Game 9", etc. If you could see the channel as only NHL 9 instead of the current NHL/MLB which is generic for all 14 channels. Reverse order in the summer delete NHL for MLB to make it easier to navigate.

It has been 2+ months since the start of the NHL season and this has not been correct.

FSN spokesman Geoff Goldman wrote me back: "We are aware that Time Warner isn't listing our Blues hockey games correctly in their guide, and have alerted Time Warner and its listings service. It's apparently only a problem on some cable boxes."

This is a variation of a problem baseball fans were having. They fix that, and now hockey fans are wondering when the damn baseball listings will go away.

There are two sides to the issue:

• On the one hand, Fox Sports is trying to accommodate multiple feeds of its Midwest network to Kansas City, St. Louis and markets outside Missouri as well. Meanwhile, they are working with multiple cable operators each of whom support dozens of cable boxes ... so it's a big-time technological boondoggle and they're trying their best.

• On the other hand -- how hard can it be to support 40 different cable boxes? Or ensure your Kansas City feed is supported 100 percent by the various cable operators in the area? You just need to hire more people, right?