NBC To Take over US Skating Coverage through Next Olympics

[SeaniBu]

The ISU only deals with the ISU Grand Prix Events and World Championships, Four Continents, and European Championships.

That is practically everything else over a 4 year period. I am sure someone has "shook hands" with $peedy from NBC.

 

[jsteam4501s]

I have always enjoyed the commentary of Tom Hammond and Sandra Bezic. The addition of Dick Button would be nice. Obviously, Bill Gannon will not be invovlved because he does so many sports on ABC. It will be strange, though, not seeing Peggy Fleming at U.S. Nationals. I mean, can you picture Peggy doing commentary on Women's basketball, softball, or soccer? Will she have to completely retire from skating telecasts?

 

[visaliakid]

Comments from both parties during the Teleconference held earlier this afternoon:

EBERSOL ON U.S. FIGURE SKATING'S INNOVATIVE SCHEDULING:

"The innovative approach that U.S. Figure Skating has taken to re-formatting this event, with its four major disciplines all on the last weekend of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, allows not only a spectacular show for the spectators in the city where the event is held each year, but more importantly, it allows us to show our viewers all four finals live. It gives us a terrific event to promote.

"I would not have been interested, no matter what the deal was, if they did not have this innovative scheduling. The idea that they have taken this event, which has been a terrific television property for more than four decades and radically re-formatted it so that all of the championships are over a two-day, weekend period where it can all be broadcast live, it's terrific. It's almost like creating their own 'final four' of figure skating. It's a very innovative approach and one that when I first heard about it, I was excited about."

HIRSHBERGER ON U.S. FIGURE SKATING'S PARTNERSHIP WITH NBC:

We have had discussions about this new contract with most of our sponsors and they are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for the sport, the athletes and what it means for the sponsors themselves."

EBERSOL ON PROMOTION OF EVENT:

"All of those years the event was on ABC and ESPN, I don't think there was a clear commitment to promotion. This is not an issue for us. Not only will we promote it well and heavily on the NBC television network, it will be promoted across the USA Network, America's No. 1 cable network. I think the commitment to promotion is much more robust here because figure skating is such a key component of the Olympics."

EBERSOL ON THE CULTURE OF FIGURE SKATING:

"Figure skating is a sport with its own subculture that is filled with all kinds of behind the scenes intrigue and fashion and glamour and tremendous drama and you want to find ways to bring that in. I think we will mount a program on NBCSports.com around that week and weekend leading into the event to feed into what Olympic Ice so beautifully achieved."

Well, to me all these comments indicate the seriousness that NBC plans to bring to the promotion of these two events as well as treating Figure Skating as a sport.

Source: Sports Features Communications

 

[R.D.]

Like I said on FSU: If NBC promotes smartly and efficiently they should reap more benefit out of the broadcasts and maximize potential viewership (esp. with live coverage) than ABC/ESPN did. I'm still surprised at the lack of advertising the two networks did for skating. And showing it at weird times of the day/night...no wonder ratings were down. (Scandal couldn't have helped much, either.)

I think he should also consider promoting it on Bravo. That's the demographic you're gonna want to reach out to most hopefully he'll have the sense to do that as well.

It excites me that at least from the preliminary talk, that the new network has a plan for skating and is intent on executing it. Although ESPN had excellent coverage of Nats this past year, they did next to nothing to generate excitement or interest in it.

 

[chuckm]

It says they are showing the finals live, but what about the SPs/CD/OD? Will we get to see them at all?

 

[nymkfan51]

ITA RedDog!!!
Part of the problem with the broadcasting of skating has been the lack of promoting it properly. I had suggested on another board about 2 months ago that NBC would be smart to cover skating, but most thought it would never happen. It makes total sense to me. NBC has a lot riding on skating being popular ... it really serves their purposes well to make it a very attractive product ... thus I think they will make a very concerted effort to make this happen. I'm sure it won't be perfect and we will have lots to discuss over the season, but then we would do that no matter what the coverage was!

 

[Mathman]

"Figure skating is a sport with its own subculture that is filled with all kinds of behind the scenes intrigue and fashion and glamour and tremendous drama and you want to find ways to bring that in...

Well, to me all these comments indicate the seriousness that NBC plans to bring to the promotion of these two events as well as treating Figure Skating as a sport.

I'm not so sure that "fashion, glamour and behind the scenes intrigue" promotes the notion of figure skating as a serious sport.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

Thanks visaliakid for bringing this to our attention. Most interesting.

My thoughts:

The innovative approach is to have all 4 Finals of a championship shown LIVE on TV over a 2 day weekend period.
It doesn't mean the whole event will be shown. I think, too, that there will be 2 hours for each Final. Hopefully, IceNetwork will pick up the Juniors, Novice and Intermediates. I also think that Skate America will handled in the same way for the 8 hours on a 2 day weekend.

NBC will give these Championships a good promotion. Apparently, NBC's affiliate, the USA Network will be involved It doesn't say how but I would presume it would take on the previous duties of ESPN, but it's really more of a wait and see what USA will be doing.

Figure Skating's sub-culture (sic) is filled with behind the scenes intrigue collusion?, fashion Johnny gets good press, glamour Sasha get a good press) , and Drama I won't go there

I must say, this whole new approach has me geared up for NBC, and I think they will be revising it every year for the better. ABC seemed to be saying, this is it. take it or leave it.

Joe

 

[Mathman]

OT trivia question: How many U.S. national championship titles does the ABC team of Dick Button, Peggy Fleming, Peter Carruthers, Susie Wynne and Terry Gannon have?

19!

Button (7), Fleming (5), Carruthers (4), Wynne (2), Gannon (1).

 

[SeaniBu]

^hey, you didn't give a chance to anwer

Thanks for grabbing those quotes visaliakid, good choices, good post:agree:

And advertising, when have we not be complaining about the lack of it? - at least most of us in the US. Now advertising on other networks is common now so that is a good idea - btw RedDog, how do you know they are not advertising on Bravo already? - and other networks like Hallmark, Logo and Oxygen:agree: I would like to see some spots Cartoon Network, [adult swim] and Toonami - cartoon lovers, particularly anime, are likely viewers IMO - don't see why Turner wasn't putting them out already? Animal planet, especially when they have a show on about horses. What about the Disney Channel? I have seen the Disney on Ice spots, how about getting those kids into the SPORT side of FS.:agree:

 

[hockeyfan228]

Eurosport does live coverage, and at least on British Eurosport, there is slo-mo review of all of the major elements, with commentary by Howarth and Slater that's worth listening to.

 

[R.D.]

It says they are showing the finals live, but what about the SPs/CD/OD? Will we get to see them at all?

I doubt it. The skating fan base might have to catch those online...or maybe there will be room to squeeze a couple in during the live broadcast (say, when resurfacing is going on).

Hopefully the TV coverage can be expanded, but I'm not holding out too much hope for that. Looks like the tradeoff here is that we lose SP coverage, but we get live coverage of all the contenders' long programs- on OTA television (not cable!) That's a tradeoff I wouldn't mind putting up with, definitely considering what the alternative might have been.

Where we really might be "jipped" is on SA coverage. Not that ABC gave a whole lot of air time to this event in the first place but this past year was the first time we got to see the ladies' short programs. (Then they waited a week to show us the freeskates...??) It's the tradeoff again: some live coverage, same weekend coverage but much fewer skaters (and no gala coverage). But then again, as the first event of the season, I'm not sure there would be enough excitement among the masses for a primetime broadcast.

Another thing to keep in mind: SA, if it's shown Sunday afternoon will compete against football on CBS and Fox.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

Eurosport does live coverage, and at least on British Eurosport, there is slo-mo review of all of the major elements, with commentary by Howarth and Slater that's worth listening to.

Yes, while I was in Europe and saw Eurosport covering Worlds. Very good! but do they do LIVE when Worlds is in Japan?

Joe

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I'm not in a hurry to see the GPs LIVE, but I do want to know the results immediately. ESPN was ok with that. I'm not sure just what NBC will be doing with the GPs. I doubt they will sending out a crew to Tokyo, Beijing, St. Petersberg. Maybe as a junket for Paris. Of course, there is Quebec City, too.

If NBC will only do Skate America for the next few years, I guess ESPN will carry on with the GPs. No mention of the GP Final? Was there? NBC likes Finals.

I still think this is a wait and see what happens.

Joe

 

[R.D.]

I think you still seem to be confused with how the coverage is going to work.

For next season it will be like this:

SA- NBC
SC- ESPN
COC- ESPN
TEB- ESPN
COR- ESPN
NHK- ESPN
GP Final- ESPN

US Nationals- NBC (Live)
Four Continents- ESPN
Europeans- ESPN
Worlds- ESPN

So NBC (for now) only has those two events. This is the final year of ESPN's ISU contract; it expires after this year and has to be renegotiated.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I understand. I was thinking long term, i.e., in the next 3 years. Not just this year in 2007 which everyone else thought it would be in 2008 from that first post of this topic..

Nothing about USA Channel?

Anything further on the uses of Broadband and IceNetork.

as I said, it is still a wait and see.

Joe

 

[R.D.]

right...the deal has *just* been finalized and hopefully there's some flexibility in there to tweak the schedule as needed. Sounds like that 10 hrs. broadcast time for Nats/SA is pretty much finalized, though...

Somehow this new coverage has revived some interest in skating for me (without even knowing who's gonna skate there). I guess it comes mostly out of curiosity on how they're going to slant the coverage (I find ESPN/ABC's coverage of most sports very boring and relying very much on the action for excitement instead of trying to generate it themselves). I was seriously considering sitting next season out and looking up results, etc.

At least I can catch the NBC coverage if nothing else. The international scene still does not interest me much.

 

[Mathman]

At least I can catch the NBC coverage if nothing else. The international scene still does not interest me much.

I think this is the audience that NBC will try to attract (i.e., those that don't care much about the international scene in an Olympic off-year). I think their slant on Skate America is that it is an "Olympic style event," something like a mini-Olympic preview. I bet they hype Kimmie to the hilt as the next U.S. ladies Olympic contender -- keep tuned until 2010!

(Prediction: Rachel Flatt will win the 2008 U.S. championship. )

 

[R.D.]

I bet they hype Kimmie to the hilt as the next U.S. ladies Olympic contender -- keep tuned until 2010!

oh man, you bet they will. That's the style NBC likes to use in their Olympic coverage...it was all MK, MK, MK in 2002, then in Torino, they did at least 4 backstage shots of Cohen during their telecast of the ladies' freeskate. I like that, though, because it helps to build excitement, build anticipation...something ABC hardly did, if ever. I wonder if they'll be doing that during their Nationals broadcast as well. I bet if it's live, they will.

It's all about BIG NAMES with these guys. The other skaters are just filler until we get to the good part

But NBC will have the task of re-introducing the Cop scoring system AND finding some new names to promote for 2010. Kimmie isn't the only one. What about Emily...if she's not going to be in school. I think they might take an interest in up-and-comer Caroline Zhang (someone said she was going to compete in senior nats next year?). As for the others, I think it's going to mainly focus on Olympic dreams. I don't think they have much of a chance at the world or Olympic team.

 

[R.D.]

(Prediction: Rachel Flatt will win the 2008 U.S. championship. )

Nah it'll be Meissner again :yes:

I'm really curious to see how NBC will promote the up and comers. Otherwise it seems like there's not much to get excited about competition-wise...for the ladies you'll likely have Meissner, Hughes, Czisny, Flatt...maybe Zhang...for the men, Lysacek, Weir, Bradley...dance, Belbin/Agosto...pairs (?)