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How Do You Rate Your Local Broadcaster's Coverage of Vancouver 2010


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I think he means he doesn't like tape delay for prime-time, when they're reporting the results during NBC Nightly News. I agree, but I think the only other thing they could do is push the Organizers to move events to 5:00-8:00pm Pacific Time, and the light isn't the best in the afternoon/evening during the winter, as long as prime-time is the money maker, I think we'll have to deal with NBC delaying events to show in the most lucrative time slot.

I personally am of the opinion that the Pacific Time Zone (as well as mountain) should be seeing everything live, even if that means prime time coverage starts at 5:00 PM PST, and late night is starting at 9:00 or 10:00 PM PST.

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How do you see NBC's coverage in Canada? Do you live close enough to the border that you pick up NBC signals over the air?

All the cable systems here in Canada carry the major US broadcast networks. Also, the "simsub" rules you hear of only apply to direct simulcasts, which means that for example, while CTV can force their own feed with their own ads over CBS's coverage of the Super Bowl if they are simulcasting it, they can't force cable systems/such to black out NBC's network coverage and replace it with their own since within the eyes of the laws, they are two distinct programs.

Plus ironically, I actually do live within the range of the Detroit stations, we're a bit frugal right now and don't get our service provider's HD coverage, so I get HD sports OTA.

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All the cable systems here in Canada carry the major US broadcast networks. Also, the "simsub" rules you hear of only apply to direct simulcasts, which means that for example, while CTV can force their own feed with their own ads over CBS's coverage of the Super Bowl if they are simulcasting it, they can't force cable systems/such to black out NBC's network coverage and replace it with their own since within the eyes of the laws, they are two distinct programs.

Plus ironically, I actually do live within the range of the Detroit stations, we're a bit frugal right now and don't get our service provider's HD coverage, so I get HD sports OTA.

Wow, the laws are much stricter here in the U.S. Cable systems would not be allowed to carry Canadian coverage. The rights to eyeballs in the U.S. are exclusively NBC's.

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A lot of the talk here regarding the host Canadian TV coverage centers entirely on CTV. But I'm inquisistive to know how the Canadians here on these boards are viewing the coverage on RDS, V, Rogers Sportsnet, TSN, RDS Info Sports, OLN, and particularly the multilingual coverage on OMNI, APTN, and ATN. As Canada being a multicultural nation like we are, and perhaps more embracing of it, do you think it could've been more of it and would like to see improvments in their coverage? After all, the announcers for the most part are new to this. How do you see them and the coverage improve come London in two years time?

Sir Roltel, what do you think of Ruby Rose's, one of Australia's hottest It Girls of the moment right now as an MTV Australia VJ, snowboarding commentary skills on FOXTEL?

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Everyone Hates NBC's Olympic Tape Delay--Including NBC

By John Hudson on February 17, 2010 6:12pm

For those who watch the Olympics--for which there are good reasons for and against--there's been one huge frustration: NBC's tape delay. The Peacock network has been airing footage of events three to 12 hours after they take place.

Disgruntled pundits and sports fans have been ripping into the network. The Seattle Times' Ron Judd says he's getting "buried by e-mail" and "swamped" with hundreds of calls by outraged viewers. A local media company has taken a poll in which 91 percent of nearly 4,000 respondents say the delay is "ridiculous."

But the most humorous expression of disgust occurred today--on NBC's very own Web site. Tweeting from Vancouver, U.S. skier Jake Zamansky said he couldn't "wait to see how bad NBC covers ski racing today." Then, automatically, nbcolympics.com surfaced Zamansky's tweet--displaying it prominently on the site. Fortunately for us, Deadspin's Tommy Craggs noticed and captured a screenshot:

nbcolympics.jpg

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The Alpine Skiing coverage has indeed been awful. They air the runs of the top Americans, those that will make the podium, and milk the crashes for ratings. With this formula, it’s predictable what the results will be. There’s none of that long “will that time / score hold up?" tension that we got with live Snowboarding and Figure Skating last night.

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For those who venerate ABC and denigrate NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/sports/olympics/20sandomir.html?ref=sports

"The modern Olympic production template was created in the ’60s at ABC Sports as an outgrowth of its anthology series, “Wide World of Sports.” Over 90 minutes on Saturday afternoons, it had a “something-for-everyone” aesthetic of conventional and weird sports. The Summer and Winter Games are essentially anthology series, composed of sports that are almost all low-rated when the Olympics are out of session.

In the early days of “Wide World,” the events that ABC showed live were limited by the amount of satellite time available, and it had to rely on film or tape. In even more ancient days, CBS had to wait for airplanes to deliver reels of film of events from the 1960 Rome Games to a studio at Grand Central Terminal.

“We grew up packaging things,” said Dennis Lewin, a former coordinating producer of “Wide World” who worked on eight Olympics. “You try to fit 10 pounds into 6-pound bags, and everyone wants to see it live. As we were able to go live more and more, we understood you wanted to put the best events where the audience was.”

Which meant prime time, from the 1968 Grenoble Games to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Lewin said that he had heard viewers complain for decades about the tape delays. He concedes that live is ideal but impractical if you want to rope in the most viewers. “If you put the Olympics on live in prime time in the East, out West, it’s 5 to 8 p.m.,” he said. “Is that fair to anybody? It’s not realistic.”

Under Dick Ebersol, a graduate of the ABC school, NBC has expanded its Olympic offerings and spent vastly more than under predecessors, including $820 million for the rights to carry Vancouver. NBC carries more prime-time hours than ABC did. It packs daytime and other NBC Universal networks with Olympic programming."

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I wouldn't use the word "pack" but they've been doing an ok job by me. I'm enjoying Stephen Colbert's segments on during the half hour between the late news and before Olympic Late-night or whatever they're calling it starts.

Well for the Winter Games, there isn't that much to pack with. During Beijing, however, streaming online content and television was definitely packed. I posted that article excerpt mainly because people criticize NBC for the way it covers the games, and yet, ABC invented the style of coverage NBC produced, and Dick Ebersol, the architect of NBC's coverage, used to work for ABC back in the day.

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One thing that drives me nuts is that CTV doesn't tell you if the event is live or not. They might pop up a Live message but if you blink it's gone. Just keep it up.

Foxtel (Australian cable/satellite broadcasters) have been doing very well on that point, maintaining a 'live' header for all such broadcasts. In fact putting aside some of the mistakes made by their commentators who are either ignorant of winter sports or sourced from Channel Nine's bunch of buffoons Foxtel have been providing pretty good coverage. Having said that I saw that they are getting in Michael Buble to help with the Canada V US ice hockey match. What a load of cobblers...

Hopefully this arrangement will thrive in 2 years time for London 2012.

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Here CTV owns a bunch of channels such as TSN, OMNI, OLN, RSO, APTN (aboriginal channel), and of course Much Music. That along with probably ten more channels have different Olympic coverage.

Watching Much Music has been horrible a bunch of mid 20's VJs acting like morons and picking up on mid teens girls. UCK! Putting teens in a hottub it's like watching mild kiddie porn or something.

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Interesting. just watching the Canada Vs USA ice hockey, and we're taking the CTV feed here. Not sure if something's up with the commentator sound or what, but it's amazing how often there's looooong periods without any commentary at all. All the crowd noise and rink noise, but nothing from the anchors. Gotta say, a refrashing change. Lets the action speak for itself. Aussie commentators can't let a second go without putting their comments on top of everything, no matter how inappropriate.

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Just so you get some idea of how much we all love Eddie 'The Dick Head' McGuire here on Channel 9's coverage:

Eddie McGuire offends

SEAN NICHOLLS AND LEESHA MCKENNY

February 19, 2010 - 7:50AM

Caused offence ... Eddie McGuire

"Racist, insular, lowest common denominator, uninformed, homophobic, dull, cheesy, irrelevant, flag-waving … like some bastard love child of Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi."

It seems Eddie McGuire's hosting of the Winter Olympics for Channel Nine is not to everyone's taste, including that of one unimpressed person who posted the above comment on the popular Facebook page "Eddie McGuire is ruining the 2010 Winter Olympics coverage" yesterday afternoon (members: 195 and rising).

Criticism of McGuire hit fever pitch following comments that he and comedian Mick Molloy made during Wednesday night's replay of a performance by the figure skater Johnny Weir.

Nine was inundated with complaints of homophobia after the pair quipped about Weir's outfit.

(Example: Molloy - "They don't leave anything in the locker room those blokes." McGuire - "They don't leave anything in the closet either, do they?")

Channel Nine declined to comment.

Now I'm not saying that EM is the most appropriate person for hosting Vancouver 2010 coverage far from it. I actually loathe the goose (and for Melbournites here this is nothing to do with me being pro or anti Collingwood...it's just because he's a twat). But....this is what the viewers of Channel Nine should have expected as a result of their consistent support via ratings for the dullard. The quickest and easiest way for anyone to lose their job on free to air TV (unless you piss off the late unlamented Kerry Packer) is to not rate.

So...stop whining, switch off or go with Foxtel, and keep that same attitude when the AFL season gets under way. To paraphrase Obama...Get McGuire Off Aussie TV? Yes We Can!

Have you seen seeing how Eddie has been soooooooooo sucking up to Weir to make it up since?

The latest:

EDDIE McGuire has extended the olive branch - and the use of his guest room - to flamboyant American ice dancer Johnny Weir.

McGuire and his sidekick, Mick Molloy, copped plenty of flak last week for making disparaging, locker room-type comments about Weir and his flamboyant outfits during a live telecast on Wednesday night.

Last night, McGuire and Weir, who has become a crowd favourite at the Winter Olympic Games, faced off on Channel 9's Vancouver Gold program.

McGuire extended an invitation to the skater, who came sixth in the men's figure skating competition, to stay at his stunning Melbourne home.

"We're hoping you'll come to Australia," McGuire said.

Weir shot back: "I'm going to stay with you, right?"

"Of course," McGuire said. "We're renovating at the moment, so maybe you can help me with my guest room?"

McGuire's Toorak mansion would be a rather nice crash pad for Weir. The Nine host paid a reported $11 million for the single-storey, Georgian-style property in late 2008.

Weir charmed the Nine production team telling them he wanted to meet Nicole Kidman, and see the Sydney Opera House.

He also asked to be photographed with the boxing kangaroo flag, as he had heard about the dispute the International Olympic Committee had with it and the Australian team in the lead-up to the Games.

Herald Sun

733414-johnny-weir-and-eddie-mcguire.jpg

Methinks Eddie reckons he can improve his "New Age man" image if he recruits Johnny as Nine's answer to Carson Kressley.

And BTW, is that fox fur that Johnny's wearing in the pic?

Edited by Sir Roltel
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NBC's Broken Olympic Coverage Manages To Annoy Absolutely Everyone

by Linda Holmes

Let us put aside for a moment the rah-rah, "Go Team USA" focus of the NBC coverage that often bugs viewers who would like a more global view of the Olympics. Let us also set aside sport-specific beefs, like the way Scott Hamilton's groaning has gotten completely out of hand when he's calling figure skating, or the way the curling announcers make it sound like only a three-year-old wouldn't know precisely how to win every single game with ease, because they certainly could.

The mere structure of the NBC coverage has left a great deal to be desired this time around, and it came to a head last night when they shuffled the much-anticipated USA-Canada hockey game off to MSNBC, in part to use NBC as a showcase for probably the least anticipated of the figure skating events: ice dancing. (Along with some speed skating, bobsled, and the men's super-G, which happened earlier in the day -- oh, and the much-hyped ski cross event.)

The basic problem with NBC's coverage is that they haven't improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it's always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as "USA-Plus" (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly), and two events -- hockey and curling -- are shown as complete events, but they're shoved off to cable.

West-coast residents have been particularly incensed that they wait an additional three hours after the East coast gets whatever "live" coverage there actually is in prime time, even though they are in the time zone where the Olympics actually are. What this means is that even if NBC is showing "live" coverage of its big events in New York, which is across the continent from Vancouver, it delays them three hours for Seattle, which is less than three hours south of Vancouver.

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Foxtel (Australian cable/satellite broadcasters) have been doing very well on that point, maintaining a 'live' header for all such broadcasts. In fact putting aside some of the mistakes made by their commentators who are either ignorant of winter sports or sourced from Channel Nine's bunch of buffoons Foxtel have been providing pretty good coverage. Having said that I saw that they are getting in Michael Buble to help with the Canada V US ice hockey match. What a load of cobblers...

Hopefully this arrangement will thrive in 2 years time for London 2012.

Funny thing about Nine. I checked the feedback for the Nine coverage of Vancouver on their website, and there's a serious clamoring for Nine to show serious love to hockey, and I'm not talking about the odd ex-patriate Canadian commentating. It's Aussies who are genuinely curious and like the sport very much! Great coming from a nation that is nowhere near being a hockey powerhouse anytime soon! :)

I guess the FOXTEL comment regarding some of the commentators answers my question in a roundabout way about Ruby Rose working the snowboarding call.

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What I put in here is no different from what's already discussed here on these boards regarding NBC's coverage structure in Vancouver. With the way how many of us consume TV programming, including the Olympics, on computers and DVR these days, is changing rapidly, and advertisers haven't quite coped with this reality. The Olympics telecast is a symptom of a bigger problem with mainstream US television's structure. The Neilsen ratings are slow to adopt these realities in the face of media consolidation, which may explain why some shows get great DVR and on-demand numbers but low ratings. And with people getting info on Olympic news and results from other outlets apart from NBC, that formula doesn't work like it did in the past.

I can understand why NBC desires to put the high-interest events on primetime, particularly when Americans are involved and attempt to nab the desirable female viewership like figure skating on prime time. But come on, that eagerly-anticipated men's preliminary hockey match between Canada-USA that was on MSNBC live should've been shown on NBC, despite that it was on a favorable time zone to the US east coast--and there are a lot of female hockey fans. No surprise it nabbed monster ratings on CTV/V/Rogers Sportsnet/TSN/RDS up in Canada. But of course you expect that from a nation that is supposedly more passionate about hockey than Americans. But people were buzzing about it. Is NBC allergic to Olympic hockey on its anchor network, except for the Gold Medal game? From the way NBC bought the US TV Olympic rights for Vancouver, NBC should've gone 22 hours a day like CTV does with its Olympic coverage, but it doesn't want to upset the soap audiences or the syndicated shows local affiliates air, I guess.

I can also understand if the games are held in Europe or in Asia, the structure NBC uses would be of good use, but even there the challenges won't go away. In fact, those are here to stay. So a rethink in the structure is sorely needed. Sure the focus will be on Americans regardless to draw viewers as the coverage in hours grows, but a more global approach is needed these days as we become more multicultural by the day.

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Well, the networks in Canada can do this easier, since even though they have structures similar to U.S. networks, Canadian networks lately have evolved into the British style "Private affiliates? What the hell is that?" sort of vibe where the network's owner pretty much owns all the affiliates too, and reduce their amount of regional output to just about zero (except for news of course).

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