- Joined
- Jan 7, 2011
NBC's bungling of Wimbledon coverage "not a good omen" for Sochi Olympics
This article from Business Insider has some rather ominous news for those of us worried about how Olympics coverage will be handled in the US. Summary: NBC Sports won't air some of the most anticipated matches of Wimbledon live and won't let any of their broadcast/streaming partners do it either. This portends badly for its upcoming Olympics coverage, and puts into doubt promises of improvement from NBC's new bosses at Comcast.
Having tried to follow Wimbledon both online and on TV, I can confirm everything that article says about the Sharapova match. And it's actually worse than the article says. The article implies that between NBC and ESPN, the Nadal/Murray match will be covered live. This turned out not to be the case. NBC refused to let ESPN or its on line stream show any of the Nadal/Murray match, which started well before NBC's Wimbledon broadcast at 12 noon. Thank god for pirated streams online, or I'd have been unable to watch all the most important matches of Wimbledon live.
This portends very ill, very ill indeed for how NBC will handle Sochi, where figure skating will take place in an even less friendly timezone to TV broadcast. The time to start complaining about NBC Sports coverage is now. The fossils running NBC Sports are extremely obstinate, thus it will probably take years and ongoing avalanches of fan outrage to get them to budge. So it doesn't matter if you're not into tennis, or whatever sport they screw up next. If you see some fan protest going on, try to join in.
This article from Business Insider has some rather ominous news for those of us worried about how Olympics coverage will be handled in the US. Summary: NBC Sports won't air some of the most anticipated matches of Wimbledon live and won't let any of their broadcast/streaming partners do it either. This portends badly for its upcoming Olympics coverage, and puts into doubt promises of improvement from NBC's new bosses at Comcast.
Having tried to follow Wimbledon both online and on TV, I can confirm everything that article says about the Sharapova match. And it's actually worse than the article says. The article implies that between NBC and ESPN, the Nadal/Murray match will be covered live. This turned out not to be the case. NBC refused to let ESPN or its on line stream show any of the Nadal/Murray match, which started well before NBC's Wimbledon broadcast at 12 noon. Thank god for pirated streams online, or I'd have been unable to watch all the most important matches of Wimbledon live.
This portends very ill, very ill indeed for how NBC will handle Sochi, where figure skating will take place in an even less friendly timezone to TV broadcast. The time to start complaining about NBC Sports coverage is now. The fossils running NBC Sports are extremely obstinate, thus it will probably take years and ongoing avalanches of fan outrage to get them to budge. So it doesn't matter if you're not into tennis, or whatever sport they screw up next. If you see some fan protest going on, try to join in.