NBC Still Hates You, Tennis Fans

Wednesday, July 01, 2009


A month ago, NBC blacked out a semifinal match featuring Roger Federer, to show a taped match between Fernando Gonzalez and Robin Soderling. Well today they've done the same thing by replaying Federer's straight set dismantling of Ivo Karlovic, while Andy Roddick battles former world number one, Lleyton Hewitt. Via Fang's Bites....

NBC is currently showing the Roger Federer-Ivo Karlovic match which finished before 10 a.m. ESPN2 was not allowed to show this match. And it joined the Tommy Haas-Novak Djokovic match in progress, but not after showing the Williams sisters in doubles and James Blake in a doubles match as well.

This was quite maddening to tennis fans who wanted to see the Federer match which he won easily in three sets, 6-3, 7-5 and 7-6 (7-3). Yes, I'm spoiling the results because this is what NBC deserves for short changing fans once again. And not only is NBC showing it on tape delay at 10 a.m. in the East, it's going to do it at 10 a.m. in all time zones so by the time the West Coast sees the match, it will have been more than three hours old.

And while NBC is preventing ESPN2 from showing certain matches as it calls exclusivity not only today, but for the rest of the week, it is streaming matches from Centre Court and Court No. 1 live on NBCSports.com. So while the network is screwing with viewers on TV, it's saying, "Come over to our website and watch the match on a small player." It's not the same as watching it live on your TV whether it be in sparkling clear high definition or in old school standard def.
Providing the feed is certainly helpful, but to take fans of Roddick on a ride like this is just wrong. Not a single person in America can watch the match on television. You'd like NBC to think of the fans when things like this happen, but this happens in every major tournament the air. They won't be changing the practice anytime soon, so it's best to just get used to it.

Update: It appears the online feature is a bit of a pain as well. Via The Business Insider....
On the NBC Sports site, we clicked the nice big WIMBLEDON LIVE! link. And we got a big popup saying we needed to upgrade Silverlight.

We pushed the buttons we were supposed to, and we downloaded some things, and we refreshed our browser like we were supposed to, and then we pushed the button again like we were supposed to. And we got another big popup saying we needed to upgrade Silverlight.

[Repeat until you want to shoot yourself].

So now we're back to watching the ancient-history Haas-Djokovic tape delay, praying that the Roddick Hewitt shootout will still be going on at 1PM ET when the TV rights revert back to ESPN. (It probably won't be. Roddick just took a 5-2 lead in the breaker and is already up a set).
NBC is Effing with Tennis Fans Again (Fangs Bites)

Posted by Awful Announcing at 12:36 PM

9 Comments:

Networks always screw their fans. I guess that in some jacked-up way, that's a more effective way to make money.

Brad James said...
Jul 1, 2009, 1:32:00 PM  

Shocking to say, but ESPN has been doing the Wimbledon coverage right.

NBC: how about you get producers that care about sports, specifically tennis? It's more than OK to bounce back and forth between games. You do it with golf.

Brent said...
Jul 1, 2009, 3:22:00 PM  

NBC completely screws over the West Coast, and I'm getting so sick of it. First off, I have to wake up at 4:00am to watch the coverage on ESPN, and I'm fine with that since there's nothing I can do about the time difference. But once ESPNs coverage is over, we on the West Coast don't get to watch the continuing coverage on NBC. No, we must wait three hours because they can't, god forbid, preempt the Today Show. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope ESPN is able to buy the rights to the entire tournament when NBCs contract is up. They actually handle tennis tournaments the right way. And what the hell was NBC thinking with the Federer match? I watched the whole thing when it finally came on my television screen, and it was a straight-sets serving exhibition. That was more important than showing American Andy Roddick in a tough match against Lleyton Hewitt? Unbelieveable.

Ryan Drescher said...
Jul 1, 2009, 4:54:00 PM  

What's worse for those of us not in the East, you can't watch the entire match. So NBC starts with the Roddick match, but it goes off the air at 1 p.m. in all time zones. But as soon as they're done in the East, ESPN comes back on and picks it up. So here in the Lost Time Zone (Mountain), the match is picked up live when ESPN comes back on at 1 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. EDT). Meanwhile, over on NBC, the beginning of the match is being shown.

ESPN definitely does some things right: It shows events live. 3 p.m., 3 a.m., doesn't matter. I loved in 2002 when it showed the World Cup from Asia at 5 in the morning. It would be great if ESPN got the entire package to show it live.

And it would be great if it got the Olympics as well. Live coverage. What a concept.

Unknown said...
Jul 1, 2009, 7:04:00 PM  

A note also when ESPN2 came on at Noon central they picked the Roddick match where it was at, which was awesome. By the way this in all time zones thing is stupid. Show things live or not at all and don't keep ESPN from showing things because people which just use the internet to find out info no matter what.

Anonymous said...
Jul 2, 2009, 1:03:00 AM  

Nevermind that there's a match currently at 11-10 in the fifth set; we'll show you a same-day tape (or modern equivalent) of the match you may have seen earlier, featuring a Williams Sister. Who wants to watch that exciting tennis match anyway?

NBC didn't even let ESPN give the scores of their featured match. NBC did, however, show the current time (BST) on the scoreboard, so the keen eye could notice that it was previously recorded.

da HOOK said...
Jul 2, 2009, 10:58:00 AM  

The worst thing is when NBC is showing matches they keep advertising wimbledon.org

While they where showing the Federer match tape-delayed they advertise:

"For the most up-to-date news and scores, go to wimbledon.org, the offical website of Wimbledon"

If I go to wimbledon.org I'll know the score of the damn match you idiots!

Degenerasian said...
Jul 3, 2009, 1:06:00 AM  

NBC still hates us on a holiday July 3rd.

Brett said...
Jul 3, 2009, 1:07:00 PM  

What makes all this absolutely unconscionable is that even if you submit yourself to the lame online coverage via NBC's Silverlight "simulcast," you receive it on TAPE DELAY. I'm watching Roddick/Murray in the second set but they're actually playing the fourth. To top if off, the "simulcast" window says "Live" all over the place. What a joke.

Can we file a civil suit against NBC or something?

Jul 3, 2009, 1:25:00 PM  

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