Category Archives: Olympics

Let the sports television wars begin!

June 9, 2011 – 3:44 am

Over the last few months, the first shots have been fired in a multi-million-dollar war for control over the sports television landscape.

For the past decade, if not the past two decades, ESPN has controlled this ground, at least on the cable side, leveraging its strong portfolio of rights across multiple sports to build the biggest brand in cable television. Sports is one of the few pieces of programming that attracts the most valuable viewers, and ESPN has used it to become the most profitable division of the Walt Disney Company and one of the most popular, well-known, and notorious brands in America, while extending its reach around the world. And ESPN’s dominance has meant that most sports need to play by ESPN’s rules or risk irrelevance.

Now others are eyeing ESPN’s turf. In fact, four of the other five major media companies have at least partially positioned themselves for their own piece of ESPN’s riches. All had some stake in the game before, but all have also attempted to set themselves up to become much more serious at the sports rights game, and ESPN only raised the stakes when it broached a whole new world in what’s possible on cable when it snagged the rights to the BCS. Comcast fired the first salvo by acquiring NBC Universal, expressing its intent to turn NBC Sports into an entity on par with ESPN. Others have made their own moves to keep up, with Fox expressing its intent to bring more sports back to FX and CBS rebranding the CBS College Sports Network to drop the “College”. Billions of dollars are at stake, and the major media companies want a piece of the action.

Playing this game comes at a price, and increased competition will mean increased rights fees, which is very bad news for sports on broadcast television – cable networks collect money from subscriber fees in addition to advertising, which broadcast hasn’t really branched into, “retransmission consent” fees collected by individual stations notwithstanding – and very good news for sports leagues and conferences. Yet it’s very possible they’ll play a significant portion of the game with none of the suitors, instead choosing to play it with themselves. Over the last decade, the league-owned network has become all the rage. All four traditional major professional leagues have their own networks, as well as two college conferences (with a third soon to join them), and while it’s common for such networks to be run or launched by the media companies (NBA TV is run by Turner, for example, and the Big Ten Network is run by Fox), it’s probably more the norm for leagues to keep their networks to themselves, as with the NFL Network.

There are five contenders to the sports programming prizes, each seeking to obtain as many of them as they can, with the ever-present specter that the leagues granting the prizes may choose none of them and keep them to themselves.

As the incumbent ruler of the roost, ESPN remains the best positioned of the bunch, but time will tell if it can keep its advantage. ESPN has just about everything the other contenders could ask for. ”The ESPN family of networks” has no equal among the other contenders, and the jokes about “The Ocho” become less funny every day. ESPN boasts not one but two full-time sports networks seen by the vast majority of the country (the only ones of their kind), including what is for most the sports highlight show, plus a broadcast outlet (available in a pinch even if they sometimes seem to want to kill sports there), a college sports network (with rights most competitors would die for), a sports news network (also the only one of its kind), a Spanish-language network, a 3D network (also the only one of its kind, although other networks have produced 3D broadcasts), and just for good measure, a classic-sports network. Throw in a video-streaming service (further advanced than any other), a radio network, a network for mobile devices, heavy investment in international rights, and a virtual monopoly on college-sports syndication, and ESPN is basically a one-stop shop for anything a league could need.

But now Comcast’s merger with NBC Universal has sent the message that they intend to challenge ESPN for the throne. Certainly they seem to be the next-best positioned, being the only other contender with anything resembling the all-sports network ESPN represents, bringing two with the soon-to-be-rebranded Versus and Universal Sports, not to mention the sport-specific Golf Channel (whose brand is already appearing on golf broadcasts on NBC). The merger coupled all of this with a broadcast presence on NBC, and while they don’t have a Spanish-language sport-specific network, they do have a Spanish-language outlet with Telemundo and mun2. Comcast also has something ESPN doesn’t: a collection of regional sports networks, which builds a strong brand for them in local markets. They also benefit from synergy with their cable operations, something no other contender can boast.

But Versus still has a long way to go before they have the quality of sports contracts ESPN has, NBCSports.com is well behind the other contenders online, NBC itself continues to struggle as a broadcast network, the closest thing they have to a college-sports network is the mtn., and the recent departure of Dick Ebersol cripples Comcast’s ability to pick up strong sports rights without one of the most respected names in sports broadcasting.

Potentially the wild card in this battle is Fox, the only other contender with a strong presence on both broadcast and cable. Fox is also the only other contender with its own collection of regional sports networks, which remains a bigger brand than Comcast’s, as well as FX, Speed, Fox Soccer Channel, the Big Ten Network, and Fox College Sports, all of which Fox has taken steps to unify under the Fox Sports brand as of late. Fox doesn’t have a sport-specific network other than their past efforts to make one out of FSN, but they do match ESPN note-for-note in various areas that other competitors don’t: a sports-specific Spanish-language network, a nightly highlights show on FSN, a radio network (which, unlike ESPN Radio, lacks any rights and might not be pursuing any), and being ESPN’s main competitor for international rights. All this makes Fox almost as well-positioned to challenge ESPN as Comcast is.

Turner is the next-best positioned; in fact, with NASCAR, MLB, NCAA Tournament, and the crown jewel, NBA rights, Turner has the best existing presence on cable of any contender except ESPN, and that has led to the development of some of the better sports streaming capabilities. Already stocked with sports on TBS and TNT, Turner’s taking of a share of the NCAA Tournament led to an expansion of sports onto truTV, and that appears to have gotten the idea into their minds of adding more sports onto that network; they were reportedly considering putting the NHL on that network. But Turner’s big Achilles heel is its lack of any sort of broadcast presence; I doubt the CW, which parent company Time-Warner is a partner in, will ever find sports to be in line with its target audience. (Which is too bad, because sports would be the best way for the CW to truly become a fifth major broadcast network.)

The remaining broadcast network is CBS, but CBS doesn’t have much other than its own broadcast network. They may be looking to change that: CBS took what was once ESPNU’s truest competitor, the CBS College Sports network, and dropped the “College” from its name, making it simply CBS Sports Network. But CBS Sports still has nowhere near the distribution of even Versus or ESPNU, and it’s doubtful that CBS would be able to snare any truly valuable rights for the network. CBS also doesn’t have much of anything else either; they don’t even hold a stake in the Westwood One radio network anymore.

But while CBS brings a strong broadcast presence (at this point, maybe the strongest broadcast brand) but has no presence on cable, Turner has one of the strongest presences on cable, but nothing on broadcast. It’s no surprise that the two companies, already partners on the CW, make natural partners for sports as well, each complementing the other with their strengths, as was demonstrated most readily when they joined forces to cover the NCAA Tournament. For big events that require both a broadcast and a cable presence, the combined forces of CBS and Turner can present a formidable force where neither would even be a contender individually.

These contenders have already started facing off over some significant sports rights, and the battles have already taken on some interesting dimensions, with ESPN picking up surprisingly few wins. Fox fired the first salvo when it picked up cable rights to the Big 12, putting games on FSN and FX for the next 13 years. Things got interesting when ESPN and Fox tag-teamed on rights to the Pac-12, apparently in part to keep Comcast from establishing a foothold in the market. This belatedly gives Fox the beachhead they were seeking in college sports during their time controlling the BCS contract. Comcast then took control by renewing NBC’s and Versus’ existing NHL rights.

However, the big prize was the much-delayed race between Fox, ESPN and Comcast for the rights to the Olympic games, America’s second-most important property. Despite conventional wisdom holding that the loss of Ebersol would hurt Comcast most in Olympic negotiations, on Tuesday NBC kept control over the Olympics through 2020 by paying nearly twice as much as the competitors. The outcome was a bit of a surprise, both that ESPN didn’t pay more after blowing a lot of smoke about making a play for the Games, and that NBC didn’t pay less, especially after losing substantial sums on the most recent contract, speculated to be among the reasons for Ebersol’s departure (in the end, this round wound up being a replay of the last, Ebersol-led bid), and blowing a lot of smoke about fiscal responsibility.

But Comcast apparently decided that a four-Games bid would ultimately cost less for them, and hopes to make more money in part by spreading the wealth to its cable networks, including Versus. However, unlike a lot of “professional” analysts I’ve read, I’m not convinced a two-week event every two years is going to give Versus the push to achieve ESPN-like legitimacy or carriage fees. NBC did indicate a commitment to showing more events live, including all of them by Rio 2016, but it’s possible many of them will only be available online. The biggest downside? ESPN continues to be shut out of the two events that would most take advantage of their family of networks, the NCAA Tournament and the Olympics. The former in particular would have been a great fit given ESPN’s existing commitment to college basketball.

Where will the next battles be? There will certainly be some interest in the Big East, but the next truly big showdown will be over Major League Baseball, whose current contract ends in 2013. That should be as entertaining and gripping as the battles we’ve already seen – they all should. And I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to keep an eye on all of them.

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By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Sports TV Business | Comments (0)

Da Blog’s Predictions for 2009

January 2, 2009 – 2:00 pm

Because a lot of sites I visit are putting up predictions for the new year, so am I, and I’ll check back in at year’s end to see how I did:

  • The year in sports is a massive disappointment. The Super Bowl pits the Dolphins against the Vikings. North Carolina, after an undefeated regular season, loses in the Final Four and the national championship pits UCLA against UConn. The game is a laugher. Cleveland beats San Antonio in the NBA Finals; the Knicks just barely miss the playoffs and LeBron James signs a contract extention to stay in Cleveland after winning his first championship. Mike D’Antoni agrees to a buyout soon thereafter to coach LeBron in Cleveland, condemning the Knicks to a decade of mediocrity. The Stanley Cup Playoffs pit the Calgary Flames against the Montreal Canadiens, and America tunes out. So does Canada when it turns into a four-game sweep that’s not that close. Neither the Red Sox nor Yankees make the ALCS, and one of them misses the playoffs as Tampa Bay and Philadelphia square off again in the World Series.
  • Tiger Woods comes back too soon, finishing second in the Masters, and misses most of 2009, raising concerns he may retire. Jimmie Johnson wins yet another Sprint Cup in a laugher, and by the end of the season he’s winning races basically by showing up, with all the teams quitting. Rafael Nadal is the only player to win at least two majors of either gender, and Roger Federer never makes a major final. USC, Cincinnati, and Alabama are the only three undefeated teams by week 4; they stay that way through the end, and USC routs Alabama in the national championship. There are no BCS buster mid-majors. At least one minor league cancels either the 2009 or 2010 season, and at least one MLS team folds. The IRL cuts back drastically on the 2010 season, and doesn’t so much pass NASCAR as NASCAR passes it backwards. By 2012, though, the IRL is back to 2008 levels, and returns to ESPN in 2018. UFC effectively becomes NASCAR’s replacement as one of the four major sports, and shows it wasn’t moving to pay-per-view that killed boxing.
  • The Olympics moves to ESPN and ABC after landing in Chicago. NBC immediately pulls out of the NHL following the 2009-2010 season. ESPN becomes the exclusive cable home of the NHL (beyond NHL Network) after 2011.
  • The Saints challenge for the NFC South, and the Lions are at least respectable. Brett Favre retires and the Jets become the new Lions. Matt Cassel bolts from New England to join the Jaguars, who instantly become a Super Bowl contender. Tom Brady comes back a clearly different player, and the Pats begin a slow slide into mediocrity. The Cowboys self-destruct and don’t even challenge for the playoffs. The Titans trade Vince Young to Houston in the offseason.
  • Barack Obama finds himself frazzled by the vexing economic crisis and various foreign crises. Troops are out of Iraq by June, but by August Iraq is effectively ruled by several cabals of warlords. Obama uses the money freed up by exiting Iraq to institute his own version of the New Deal, but it doesn’t work very well. Meanwhile little actual “change” happens, even from the politics of the last eight years, and when Obama calls in the military to break up a food riot in November, many in his own party compare him to Bush, and the “netroots” begin forming their own nascent political movement for 2012.
  • By 2012, that movement has gained enough steam to attract attention (and support) from both major parties. However, the economic crisis has only gotten worse and the US has effectively become a vassal state of China… and the Republicans, as a result, prove far more resilient than expected after adopting a bizarre fascist-anarchist policy, a strange kitbashing of the politics of Ron Paul and George W. Bush. Before 2020, World War III has erupted, and America is Nazi Germany after the GOP win the 2012 elections, the last to be held under the Constitution of 1776. The 2016 Olympics become America’s 1936 Munich Games, and come complete with a past-his-prime Michael Phelps being dragged back to the pool. The world comes out of the war with the economy back on track, but set back to the Middle Ages if not before. China, India, and Japan become the new “modern” world powers with Depression-era technology, set back from reaching 1950s-era technology by the ravages to the environment. The Amazon becomes a desert; Canada and Russia become the world’s new breadbasket.
  • The Internet undergoes its latest metamorphosis. By the end of the year, it is as good at watching video as the average television. In the short term, it only benefits from the deepening economic crisis. When the Obama administration passes a universal broadband bill, it sparks an Internet revolution, and blogs become the new MySpace, since you can at least theoretically make money off them. Internet advertising finally becomes viable, if only because nothing else is.
  • Webcomics undergo an explosion during this time. A Penny Arcade TV series is commissioned for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block by year’s end. By 2010, a Girl Genius movie is in development, and rumors of an Order of the Stick movie persist as well. Sandsday becomes the biggest new thing in webcomics, and by year’s end I’m fighting off TV series offers of my own.
  • Da Blog attracts two huge followings in particular: people looking for webcomics criticism, who singlehandedly make it ten times more popular than Websnark ever was, rendering my getting a real job unnecessary, and people looking for straight-dope political analysis. Da Blog plays a significant role in attracting new audiences to politics, healing the rifts of our political landscape, and shaping the aforementioned nascent political movement.

And that just left me incredibly drained and depressed. I think it’s better if I don’t try to predict what happens, and just try and enjoy the ride. You should try it some time.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Blog News, Classic Da Blog, NFL, NHL, Politics, Predictions, Sports, Webcomics | Comments (3)

Predictions for SportsCenter’s "Top 10 Games" of 2008

December 12, 2008 – 11:06 pm

In case you haven’t heard, this was a particularly exciting year in sports. When ESPN’s “SportsCenter” does its annual “Top 10 Games” countdown, they could easily extend it to a Top 20. With so many great games, I’ve taken it upon myself to take my own stab at mimicking the ESPN list and what it might look like.

Between some college football playoff-related features and Da Blog’s regular features, I think it’s reasonable to schedule the College Football Rankings’ release, as well as the bowl schedule, for Thursday.

#10: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men’s basketball gold medal match, USA v. Spain. The “Redeem Team” lives up to their name in a game Bill Simmons called “one of the 10 most dramatic basketball games of my lifetime. And nobody gave a crap or even knew. The game started at 2:30 in the morning ET and vanished into thin air. Only West Coasters and super-diehards stayed up to see it.”

#9: NHL Hockey, Winter Classic, Pittsburgh Penguins @ Buffalo Sabres. Could the NHL have asked for anything less than a shootout from the first (true) Winter Classic?

#8: College football, SEC Championship Game, Florida v. Alabama. If the regular season is a playoff, this was its semifinal – and it certainly played like one.

#7: MLB Baseball, ALCS Game 5, Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox. For the moment, just forget about the fact the Sox couldn’t come all the way back to win the series.

#6: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, swimming, 4x100m freestyle relay OR 100m butterfly OR 4x100m medley relay. The first two were dramatic finishes on Michael Phelps’ road to Mark Spitz’s record. The last was the one that broke it and had an exciting finish of its own. And I only have it at #6.

#5: College football, Texas @ Texas Tech. The Red Raiders came out to an early lead, only to see Texas come storming back to take a lead of its own. In the end, Texas Tech had the play of the year, and as it turned out, the one that kept Texas out of the National Championship Game.

#4: Wimbledon, men’s final, Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal. This and the next two I could have put in any order. A five-set, record-length classic that ended with Nadal finally getting the best of Federer away from clay.

#3: Men’s college basketball, NCAA Tournament Final, Kansas v. Memphis. Finally, a National Championship game that lives up to being the culmination of March Madness instead of being a complete anticlimax!

#2: US Open Golf, playoff, Tiger Woods v. Rocco Mediate. 19 holes of pure tension, as basically an unknown gives Tiger every inch of challenge he has, and brings out Tiger’s best to put him on top. And Tiger was injured to the extent it’s still the last event he’s played!

#1: NFL Football, Super Bowl XLII, New England Patriots v. New York Giants. Perhaps the greatest iteration ever of the biggest sporting event of every year? How can it not be #1?

Honorable Mentions: IRL racing, Indy Japan 300 (Danica wins!); Euro 2008 quarterfinal, Croatia v. Turkey (or was it the semis, where Germany beat Turkey? Basically a sop to my soccer-crazed dad anyway); MLB Home Run Derby; ArenaBowl XXII, Soul v. SaberCats (about the only thing that could make it better is if it were the last one); some NBA game I’m forgetting; some obscure game I never heard of or just didn’t watch (possibly from MMA, boxing, the LLWS, Fresno State’s run, the WNBA, MLS, or the like)

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Baseball, Blog News, Classic Da Blog, College Basketball, College Football, Golf, NFL, NHL, Sports, Sports Watcher, Tennis | Comments (2)

Someone assure me I’m not the one going insane. If I am, blame them anyway.

August 24, 2008 – 3:53 am

In the past, I’ve complained a little about my downstairs neighbors having loud parties all night long. Since I’ve complained about them, they’ve basically stopped, but my front apartment neighbors are still a bit of a problem. They don’t play music loud enough to be heard from across the house (midway through the house, sure), and they don’t really even have big enough of a house from what little I could tell to even hold parties, but they do play music intermittently at all hours of the day.

My bedroom is on the far side of the house from our shared wall. The room with the TV in it is in the near side of the house, with the couch flush up against the wall. Those are the two places where I can sleep in the house, or at least where I used to sleep until I had to deal with the guys downstairs and up front. Until recently, I never slept on the couch anymore because the people downstairs tended to play their music closer to the back of their house, which would be the front of the house overall, since their front door was in the back of the house overall. It didn’t always help to sleep in my bedroom, because the people downstairs tended to have people congregate in the parking lot, partly the result of Mom’s request that they not smoke inside. Well, I probably could barely smell the smoke anyway, but I did have to bear the full brunt of the noise with my room flush up against the parking lot. But I digress. The point is, I was at least able to drown out the noise of the parking lot because the clock in my bedroom is a clock radio, so I was able to turn on my own kind of music to drown them out and get to sleep.

But since the parties stopped, possibly the result of my mom calling the police a couple of times (dialing 911 to do so!) I had started drifting to the couch more often. Which brings me to tonight, or last night rather as you read this. Between the men’s basketball final (I erred in reporting in Sports Watcher that the basketball final would be delayed on the West Coast; NBC’s own web site was either not up-to-date on Friday or just plain wrong) and the closing ceremony on CBC, I could only give myself a little less than three hours of sleep, and with the music playing quite a bit louder than I would otherwise desire, I found myself pounding on the wall quite a bit more than I otherwise would during the basketball final, hoping it would get quiet enough for me to sleep on the couch but dreading it wouldn’t. When the music continued and wearing earplugs didn’t muffle the sound enough even with my ears facing away from the wall (I wouldn’t say no to an iPod with pre-loaded classical music and noise-cancelling headphones for Christmas), I decided to see if the fact that I could only have (at this point) two and a half hours of sleep, thus needing every minute of that sleep, because of events whose time I couldn’t change, and that I couldn’t simply move to my room, might produce just TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF QUIET, STARTING AT 2:20 IN THE MORNING, ONCE.

Instead the person who answered the door berated me. He seemed to start going on about a “job” and I was prepared to ask him when he worked and determine if having a bunch of music playing at 2:20 in the morning was not more of an impediment to that job than whatever I did in reaction to that music, but instead he demanded to know how old I was. He then told me that when he was my age (this guy can’t be older than 30, and I’m 20 already) he had to wake up for a job at 7:30 (I still was not able to ask whether he had to listen to music at 2:20 in the morning) and how dare I pound on the wall and come over and ask them to turn the music down for the sake of watching TV!

I started to walk back, slowly – well, I think that was what I was doing – but he had more: the people in both the front and downstairs apartments had resigned the lease, and they knew my mom wrote complaining letters every month about the noise, and apparently the landlord – I’m going from half-hour later memory here – came over every once in a while and laughed with them about it! Keep in mind, our family has lived in this house since like 1996 and this problem only started last year!

It’s at that point that I had to cry out in anguish to the heavens and anyone who would listen. HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE MAD? IS IT SUDDENLY NORMAL TO PLAY MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AS THOUGH AM HAS BECOME PM? But no sooner had I finished than this guy was brusquely shoving me down the path and wanting to have my mom come out (who wasn’t there at the time) and let me tell you, dear reader, if I wasn’t the proverbial 90-pound weakling I’d have started a knock-down fight with that guy right that instant. Hey, it’s 3 AM as I write this, you gotta excuse my potential windows into my more seedy side, but raise your hand if you’re just going “hell yeah!” instead. So he wanted to see my mom, and he was threatening to send me to the crazy house (for my little scream about how THEY were crazy) and that if I didn’t get back in that instant (he was standing in the way between me and the door) he’d knock my teeth out, and ditto if I so much as talked to him the rest of the night. And when I finally started heading back to the door he kept shoving me several more times in quick succession, apparently because my sleep-deprived body wasn’t jogging back to the door in fear.

I’ve gotten the impression that not just the multiplex I live in, but several more houses right near the closest arterial I live near, have become home to party-friendly, up-all-night, college students. Even ones way up on a high ridge. I’d say this is among the many reasons I can’t fathom how I could possibly be more motivated to get a real job, so I could move away from these people (or at least fix my reputation at school enough to move back to the dorms, which is sure to be made a lot harder by having to deal with this stuff and being sleep-deprived as a result), but that would essentially be admitting defeat. It would be giving up the neighborhood, which for over ten years was fairly idyllic and, well, livable, to the forces of unlimited beer, smokes, PARTY! and all sorts of other unseemly elements.

To paraphrase Mike Gundy, I’m a college student! I’m 20! I don’t subscribe to the theory that the night is a time to pump up the music (and, my mom suspects in the case of the people downstairs, smoke drugs so sleep literally becomes an unknown concept), I subscribe to the theory that it’s a time to sleep! Catch some Z’s! I actually care about getting my studies done! I have to wake up for a class that starts at 9 AM this coming quarter! I’m going to have to wake up at 7 AM or earlier to get ready in time! I can live a perfectly fulfilling life by being completely unconscious for, ideally, seven or eight hours a night – or at least I could, if I didn’t have to deal with people who feel differently! Perhaps, if these hooligans maybe tried shutting the music off once in a while, and put their head in their studies, or in the case of the people who have already ditched college or graduated with probably-grade-inflated scores, got actual jobs (because there’s no way they’re old enough and non-brain-damaged enough to have graduated and deserved it), they’d discover it to be at least as if not more fulfilling than throwing your f’ing life away every night!

EDIT: I forgot the part where this guy suggested I move my 27-inch TV that’s hooked up to a cable box, two VCRs, and a DVD player, and sits on a 36×48-inch piece of furniture. NOT gonna happen.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in About Me, Classic Da Blog | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/23-24

August 22, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
11-9 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, baseball bronze medal game, women’s handball gold medal game, baseball gold medal game, water polo semifinal, table tennis semifinals, men’s field hockey gold medal game (USA). Yes, that’s TONIGHT, in just one hour on the East Coast. If I were keeping track of any of this I’d give you pithy analysis, but all I can offer is: Can the Americans avenge their softball cousins? (I heard they lost to Japan in the gold medal game, is that right?) Oh, and pretend 6-7:30 AM isn’t part of this, that’s when the water polo semifinal is on.

9-5 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, medal finals in women’s basketball, rhythmic gymnastics, synchronized swimming, boxing, canoe/kayak, and women’s volleyball (NBC).

5-8:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Bristol race (ESPN). We just don’t have NASCAR on here enough.

9-11 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men’s basketball bronze medal game (CNBC). Why the hell is Lithuania so good with no players I’ve heard of?

Sunday
12:30-2:30 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, medal finals in table tennis, mountain biking, boxing, and track and field (NBC). Alternately, there’s a women’s volleyball match at midnight on Telemundo.

2:30-5 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, men’s basketball gold medal game (NBC). Warning: West Coast viewers get screwed again, because this is same on both coasts! In fact the semifinal game this morning was delayed even in the Central time zone, at least in Chicago! It seems the Olympics are indeed more popular on the West Coast than on the East, though that may just be because they always HAVE gotten delayed broadcasts. Some commenters on Awful Announcing suggested putting either the live broadcast or the delay on one of NBC’s cable networks, to get around the problem of people not being home at the right times. I have a better idea: We’ve been talking about digital TV and subchannels all week, why not stick the live feed on there? It’s likely to take away “Weather Plus” time, but it’s better than insulting a wide swath of your audience by telling them New York really is the center of the universe and actually making people beg for ESPN to save them, even people who are normally ESPN haters. I’m watching this, the Closing Ceremony on CBC, and then I’m done with the Olympics. (ESPN is on record as saying they would never think of delaying events for the West Coast.)

5-9 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Closing Ceremony (CBC). I do have to say, NBC seems to treat the Olympics as more of a special event. They play the Olympic Song and CBC just has this weird, almost-offensive, almost-more-appropriate-in-India opener. And CBC uses their own regular sports graphics instead of coming up with something unique.

10-12 PM: Major League Lacrosse, NB ZIP Championship Game (ESPN2). The worst part? This isn’t even the only lacrosse league in North America. And you probably haven’t heard of the National Lacrosse League either. Apparently it’s semi-big in Canada. Who knew? (Just barely interferes with the Olympics on USA on the West Coast.)

12:30-3 PM: Little League Baseball, Little League World Series (ABC). Does it seem a little odd that we pay so much attention to the LLWS for basically no reason? I mean, other than to be reminded about “sportsmanship” that’s basically a no-thing anyway? And why do the other three divisions have their World Series on Saturdays while neither Little League WS ends on that day?

Honorable Mention: 12:45-5 PM: National Pro Fastpitch, Championship Series (MLB.TV, second game if needed). It’s a league with a grand total of six teams. One look at their website shows how far behind they are. They don’t even have TV for their championship series, even, by all appearances, on tape delay. And this coming from one of the more popular non-football-or-basketball NCAA sports. What’s going on here?

(Oh, and perfect timing. Aren’t all your good players in the Olympics?)

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, LA Dodgers @ Philadelphia (ESPN). I’ve banned NBC’s Olympic coverage from this space!

Next week, the first weekend of the US Open, and can you feel the football start?

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Baseball, Classic Da Blog, Lacrosse, NASCAR, Softball, Sports Watcher | Comments (0)

This probably won’t be the last I have to say about the Olympics. Probably. Maybe.

August 17, 2008 – 10:16 am

Couple of notes from last night at the Olympics.

First, showing events live on both coasts isn’t the only thing the CBC beats NBC over the head with. I watched both networks’ coverage of the 1500 meter freestyle, and even though CBC was a complete homer for Ryan Cochrane, they still ran circles around NBC, who took until five minutes into the race (after a commercial break) to mention him. Were it not for the occasional check-ins on the status of Larsen Jensen, I might have thought I was hearing the Australian broadcasters, so focused were they on Grant Hackett. In the process, as they called Hackett’s doomed-to-failure chase of ???, they missed a pretty good chase for the bronze.

Second, I was probably the worst track athlete in the world in high school for two years, stumbling to Charlie Brown-like finishes in the most junky heats of the 100 and 200 (the latter of which I only raced in because I needed a second event), but I still consider that enough experience to put my TV analyst cap on regarding the 100. Usain Bolt may have cost himself more than a more unbeatable world record by celebrating several meters short of the finish. He may have made himself some enemies as well.

If other sports like basketball, but especially sports with a lot of tradition (and at over 2500 years, there’s no sport with more tradition than track and field), are any indication, there is probably an “old guard” who stands for doing things “the right way”, which at least in the eyes of some, usually means “don’t have fun”. I don’t know this for certain, but I’d be shocked if there weren’t some people who will say of Bolt, “he’s too cocky” – regardless of whether he is or not – “he’s too showboating, he let up with 15 meters to go in the 100, he’s too Hollywood” – you’re nodding your head, Tom, you know what I’m talking about!

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in About Me, Classic Da Blog | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/16-17

August 15, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
12:30-6 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, diving and the medal final in the women’s 10km track race (12:30-2 AM), plus primetime replay (2-6 AM) (NBC). Same on both coasts. You could watch USA on the East Coast to get closer to the start time of the next item.

10-6 PM: Little League Baseball, Junior League, Senior League, Junior League Softball, and Big League Softball World Series…es (ESPNU). Not necessarily in that order. The Little League Softball World Series ended back on Wednesday. That’s the only LLWS that doesn’t end on the weekend. Get with the program! Is it just me, or does the marquee age division of the LLWS seem arbitrary considering it’s the youngest group? We completely lose sight of these kids as they move up through Junior, Senior, and maybe Big League, then we regain sight in the College World Series, then we lose sight of them again until they get called up to the bigs because we pay no attention to AAA whatsoever.

7:30-12 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, track and field and swimming and the awarding of medals in both (NBC). Same on both coasts, so there’s interference with Little League on the East Coast. I had been thinking about writing a post about the rising tide of discontent on the West Coast at being told events are “live” when they’re still tape-delayed. Then I saw that more than half of the top five highest-rated major markets, and almost half of the top 17, are in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, and almost all the largest markets in those two time zones (eight of the top nine, with Seattle’s ratings depressed by being able to see events truly live on CBC) are averaging at least a 21 rating for the Olympics, which I believe is higher than NBC’s nationwide average. Which means one of two things: people on the West Coast are more into the Olympics than people back East, and I see no reason why that should be so, especially in Mountain time; or NBC’s decision to tape delay events is HELPING ratings in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. I have a feeling NBC may decide they’re never pulling strings to get events live in primetime for a non-American Olympics again (starting in 2012, that is). On another note, this is the last medal Michael Phelps needs to pass Mark Spitz, and it’s also women’s marathon day.

Sunday
12:30-6 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, beach volleyball, track and field, and the primetime replay (NBC). Same on both coasts. I’d put USA here but it interferes with NBC’s primetime coverage.

11-2:30 PM: NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing, Michigan race (ESPN). Because the Sprint Cup Series isn’t on here often enough.

3-5 PM: Little League Baseball, Venezuela v. “Saudia Arabia” (ESPN2). Yes, that’s how it actually appears on ESPN’s own web site.

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, Philadelphia @ San Diego (ESPN). The Phillies may be in NL East contention, but you can tell this game was decided on before the season started.

9-11 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Softball, United States v. China (CNBC). Looking back over what I said last week about CNBC’s coverage, I’m not sure what they think their audience is. I accused them of misreading their audience last week, yet that was for a time slot that included tennis, which fits right in with the rich-snob demographic. I was focusing on boxing, yet that so often gets called the “sweet science” and seen as so much superior to the supposed bloodlust and chaos of MMA, as though boxing was as tame as golf. And then there’s softball, and the only way I see this fitting in with CNBC’s “male demographic” is if they’re thinking “Ooh! Boobs!” Yet at the same time, the fact that it’s softball and not some other female sport tells me it’s an old male demographic that remembers when baseball was the national pasttime (AS IT SHOULD BE!) and isn’t into all this football stuff the whippersnappers are into. Which… adds up to a pretty disturbing demographic.

11-11 AM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, water polo, synchronized swimming, canoeing, kayaking, field hockey, basketball, and table tennis, including the table tennis gold medal match (USA). Prepare to march back into work on Monday and fall right asleep, stay there till quitting time, sleep all the way home, and sleep the rest of the day.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Baseball, Classic Da Blog, NASCAR, Sports Watcher | Comments (0)

Sports Watcher for the Weekend of 8/9-10

August 8, 2008 – 5:00 pm

All times PDT.

Saturday
2-1 PM: Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, soccer, shooting, badminton, fencing, equestrian, beach volleyball, basketball, and weightlifting, including the awarding of shooting and weightlifting medals (USA). Same on both coasts. According to NBC’s olympic site, “the first gold medal awarded at the Beijing Games could come in” either the shooting or weightlifting events. Aren’t they both scheduled for a certain time? Could you not just look at the schedule?

1-3 PM: Little League Baseball, Senior League Softball World Series (ESPN2). No, they’re not just making random shit up to tide people over for the big shebang.

3-5:30 PM: IndyCar Racing, IndyCar 300 at Kentucky (ESPN2). A moment of silence for the IRL’s impending move to Versus.

7-10 PM: Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC 87 (PPV). So it turns out the UFC does space out its PPVs after all. I apologize for suggesting otherwise. Interferes with Olympic primetime coverage on the West Coast.

Sunday
11-11 AM: Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, basketball, tennis, soccer, archery, and weightlifting, including the awarding of medals in archery and two in weightlifting (USA). Same on both coasts (if that causes a problem, coverage is on NBC from 12:30 to 6 AM). Because real men stay up all night watching the Olympics!

11-4 PM: PGA Golf, PGA Championship, final round (CBS). If golf were to become part of the Olympics, what would happen to the PGA Championship?

5-8 PM: MLB Baseball, St. Louis @ Chicago Cubs (ESPN). Hey, I need to get baseball in somewhere. I should have NBC’s primetime coverage next week.

11-1:30 AM: Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, boxing and tennis (CNBC). NBC has said that they’re putting stuff on CNBC that fits with its male demographic. Um… not the UFC, bloodlust-filled male demographic… more like the wimpy, pass-the-caviar, rich-snob demographic…

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Auto racing, Baseball, Classic Da Blog, Golf, Sports Watcher, UFC | Comments (0)

Correction

August 7, 2008 – 4:51 am

So I stayed up until after 3 AM just to try and get my computer to settle down enough to get my Truth Court demonstration up, a half hour after that to get the strip up, and a half hour after that to get this up.

I made an error in the strip that has nothing to do with the lack of sleep, because I made this strip back in February.

As I learned, well, I guess last night now (a guy just ran by apparently delivering newspapers and it’s not yet 4), the Opening Ceremonies do not start at 8:08:08 AM Chinese time.

They start at 8:08:08 PM Chinese time.

Which means I could have run today’s strip on 8/08/08, instead of the less pretty 8/07/08.

Oh well.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in About Me, Blog News, Classic Da Blog, Sandsday | Comments (0)