NBC Sports stinks
I’m a huge tennis fan so I’ve been watching, when I can, end-to-end daily coverage of Wimbledon on ESPN2, until yesterday. I woke up early and saw the end of the Federer match. At 7:00 a.m. PDT, ESPN announces that they are going to stay with the match until it ends, but that NBC is picking up the coverage at 10:00 a.m. in ALL time zones. WTF?
That means the rest of the live matches will be over by the time 10:00 a.m. rolls around here and the scores posted all over the Internet. There were only eight matches yesterday, four women’s and four men’s. It happened again today, no live matches after Safina’s (which went past 7:00/10:00 a.m.) and there were only four women’s matches. The same stupid set-up is scheduled for tomorrow. God forbid they preempt the Today Show. Does anyone on the West Coast even watch it? Everyone I know either watches Good Day L.A. or KTLA.
By the way, NBC pulled this same bullshit with the 2008 Summer Olympics … tape delaying coverage for the West Coast, while airing live on the East Coast. I mean seriously, the Olympics, they only come around every four years. We couldn’t even watch Fishy Phelps win his 8th gold medal live. Is anyone else as pissed-off about this as me?
So you ask, what the hell does this have to do with Orange County? It’s where my TV is. Simple as that.
I totally agree with you! What is the point of tape delay when we know the scores? Why in the worldn’t NBC show it live? They are there for the taping? They get to see it live – wake up and get with the program! This is ridiculous!
Now I’m really mad!!! It’s 10:05 a.m. PDT and Andy Roddick is playing Leyton Hewitt right now. Live. They’re in the the 3rd set with each of them winning one. Do you think NBC is showing this match? Of course they’re not, because they SUCK!!! They’re showing the Federer match that ended hours ago. Grrr!!!
[…] Orange County (CA) Metroblog is also angry with the NBC practice of tape delaying matches especially on the West […]
I agree, this stinks. ESPN/network shared coverage is usually bad, because ESPN typically does everything live. I don’t understand why NBC insists on showing their coverage during the week if it isn’t going to be live–you piss off the serious fans that want to watch it live, and you annoy the regular daytime TV watchers.
And never mind Phelps–the biggest disgrace during NBC’s 2008 Olympics coverage was them burying Usain Bolt. At least they made a big deal about Phelps. Bolt went out and gave two of the most amazing performances we’ll probably ever see from an individual athlete (and I say that as someone that doesn’t really care about track & field), but because he wasn’t American, it wasn’t a big deal to NBC.
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