NBC vs. IceNetwork vs. Universal Sport

[momjudi]

I absolutely hated NBC's broadcast. At last year's Nationals broadcast Scott explained how Evan beat Johnny yet on Sunday instead of explaining why Kozuka won the gold, they played the "poor Evan, he was robbed" scenerio. Johnny the silver medalist was barely mentioned even though the event was promoted by NBC as the first face to face showdown between Johnny and Evan.

I wish Dish Network carried Universal sports. I hate that icenetwork decided to block the men's final because they claimed they could not discipher my ip number even after I had it verified for them by my internet provider.

 

[Blades of Passion]

What's sadder about the situation is how it just had to be a non-American that Evan lost to.

Rambling on about how the Japanese guy stole the title sure doesn't do anything to help America's ridiculously isolationist viewpoint towards the rest of the World.

 

[flying camel]

Does anyone know if Universal Sports is going to show Skate Canada?

 

[lcd]

I must have misheard, but I was under the impression that someone else had been hired to do commentary for dance?

Scott is completely irritating. Loved him as a competitor, entertainer... but...

Kurt Browing, Tracy Wilson, Susie Wynn... miss them all. I even miss Terry Gannon!

 

[R.D.]

I could se why Scott annoys some (ok, lots of ) folks, but I don't mind his excitement. In fact, I welcome it...to a certain extent. At least the NBC duo doesn't go on rambling about things completely irrelevant to the skater on the ice like what type of cookies her competitor likes to eat *cough*D&P*cough*

 

[Tonichelle]

I agree - I'd take Scott over Dick and Peggy any day (okay more Scott over Dick... Peggy has some good in her commentary)... but I'd much prefer to have Kurt (for the enthusiasm) and Paul (for the technical)...

and I can't believe I just said that... lol

 

[Particle Man]

Mathman is absolutely correct in saying that CoP is incomprehensible to the average viewer. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a hardcore-skating-fan bubble. To adapt another quote in the thread: "criticism of CoP isn't going away, so stop complaining about it!"

I was interested to read the comments about Scott H.'s bias. That is indeed extremely sad. But at least he speaks out against CoP, so that's something in my book. And no, conspiracy theorists, that isn't just cause commentators are lazy. It's cause PEOPLE CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE SCORING. I'll keep saying it till people grasp it. CoP is killing the sport. Full stop.

momjudi: You have to call icenetwork's tech support and get it fixed by phone. I had to do it last season, I had to do it this season. Their email support is beyond useless, I think it took them a week to respond the last time I tried. Also make sure you are logged out when they enable the IP unblock. That will save a little time.

 

[R.D.]

And it's often not clear even to the audience. As the NBC people were saying, a lot of times the errors that get big deductions can't be seen unless you have TV slo-mo. And the arena audience lacks that...the TV audience may or may not have it (depending on the network that's covering it). A fall, that can easily be seen. A two-foot or other non-fall jumping mistake, fine. But a slight under-rotation?

I don't think it's the system itself per-se that's the issue. It's how frickin' complicated and in-depth it is. I think it needs to be tweaked so it's a little more viewer-friendly...same goes for gymnastics. I know I wasn't the only one shaking my head at all the scoring mess in Beijing.

 

[Tonichelle]

I agree that it's not always clear and some of the nit picks are too nitpicky - but that's few and far between.

Like US Nationals last season. a lot of people can say it was as close as what the judges called, but it was pretty obvious to most of us that Evan was gifted the win. There's no flipping way he was cleaner than Johnny and it came down to a level... Evan should have been docked at least in negative GOEs...

but you're not going to get the perfect scoring system until you can 'cleanse' the judging panel so that they have no bias whatsoever. And since that's impossible we the fans get a lot of fodder to debate for decades in the off season.

 

[MissIzzy]

But at least he speaks out against CoP, so that's something in my book. And no, conspiracy theorists, that isn't just cause commentators are lazy. It's cause PEOPLE CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE SCORING. I'll keep saying it till people grasp it. CoP is killing the sport. Full stop.
.

I don't get what's so hard in this particular situation. Someone doesn't turn around quite enough on the jump, someone loses all their points for it. Unfair? Maybe. Hard to understand? Er, no.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I don't get what's so hard in this particular situation. Someone doesn't turn around quite enough on the jump, someone loses all their points for it. Unfair? Maybe. Hard to understand? Er, no.

No one calls what the skater intended to do. Although the Tech Panel has copies of the PPC, he does not say, "he will now do a 3Lutz". He calls what the skater did after he's seen it. If the rule is to follow the definition of a jump and the skater cheats a take off edge, he will call WET. How do we know there was an attempt at at 3A. He may not have actually learned the proper lutz but puts it in his program for the extra jump pass.

I don't think, under present guidelines, that the jump is void. He gets credit for the air turns at the comfortable edge he took off on, but not at the defined edge, which, of course, is the difficulty in the element. That gets only a -1, so it's basically worth doing and getting some points. Of course, he has to land the easier jump properly as he would all jumps.

Air turns are more important than take off edges in figure skating. A wrong edge take off is not so penalized as a triple jump which came up short of the minimum amount of landing leeway.

Given the grace of the wrong edge takeoff and the consequence of the underrotation, skaters should be careful.

 

[Mathman]

I don't get what's so hard in this particular situation. Someone doesn't turn around quite enough on the jump, someone loses all their points for it. Unfair? Maybe. Hard to understand? Er, no.

Still...ask a football fan how many points you get for a touchdown.

Then ask a figure skating fan how many points you get for a level 3 flying change-edge combination spin -- and how many you lose if you don't complete the 6 revolutions in the second position.

 

[champs]

Well, someone else on one of the forums I frequent captured this cap of Kimmie Meissner in her starting pose for her free program...judge for yourself:

http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/309/actcap14na9.jpg


I welcome the HD picture quality. It definitely makes a difference in the sports experience. I mean, it was the difference between "Why did Yuna score so much?" and "aaah, I see now".

Oh thanks for the cap.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, I know which forum you are talking about, but because of the watermark logo I thought it might be an NBC cap. (I am a member on that forum and posted a video of Shawn Johnson's BB from a japanese HDTV broadcast back in August.)
So if this and his other screencaps of Kimmie's Free Program are indeed from Universal Sports, it's great quality but just like NBC it gets quite blocky in fast moving scenes due to lack of sufficient bitrate.

 

[champs]

Oh, and thanks jcoates for your input as well!
thanks to NBC's camera crew I also enjoyed watching/recording SA in HD in my country. I believe they aired it in HD in S. Korea (SBS) and probably in Canada (CBC) as well.

The HD quality on Universal Sports was wonderful. One thing I noticed is that the skaters' speed across the ice is much more apparent in HD.

 

[sillylionlove]

Still...ask a football fan how many points you get for a touchdown.

Then ask a figure skating fan how many points you get for a level 3 flying change-edge combination spin -- and how many you lose if you don't complete the 6 revolutions in the second position.

That would be 6 points for a touchdown and 1 point for the field goal after!!

As for the figure skating thing....I have no idea!!!

 

[enlight78]

Still...ask a football fan how many points you get for a touchdown.

Then ask a figure skating fan how many points you get for a level 3 flying change-edge combination spin -- and how many you lose if you don't come plete the 6 revolutions in the second position.

I don't think the fans need to know the value of every element. If the fans just knew the total possible points. They could do an estimate subtract. Like if I knew the total possible for Evan's tech was 76.and PC was 100(free skate). And I saw him make a couple of mistakes. 66 tech and 76 PC doesn't sound so bad.It helped me with gynastics win I knew total possible score for the different routines.

 

[Tonichelle]

I agree that if we were given the base value of the program at the beginning, and not the personal best score, it would be a heck of a lot easier to know if the skater went above and beyond, or didn't even hit the planned points

 

[Buttercup]

I agree that if we were given the base value of the program at the beginning, and not the personal best score, it would be a heck of a lot easier to know if the skater went above and beyond, or didn't even hit the planned points

I agree; with a base value at least peopel would know what a skater is shooting for and where that puts them in comparison with their competitors. Also, PBs can be skewed by generous judging at a single event and may not really reflect a skater's ability.

Still...ask a football fan how many points you get for a touchdown.

6 points for the TD, 1 for the PAT, unless it's blocked or there's a two point conversion. Two point conversions are fun. People should take more risks!

The thing is, fantasy sports are huge these days, and the people involved in that keep track of so many obscure details and statistics - why should figuring out CoP be harder for those interested in skating?

 

[Tonichelle]

I'm another fan of the two point conversions!

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

Back on Topic. I like football and love base ball. That makes me a typical NewYorker. But we are talking Figure Skating which is not terribly popular in New York.

I throw out this for consideration. Would it not be special if Universalsport and ESPN were in competition? Yahoooooo.