Sunday, May 31, 2009

French Open miscellany

Caroline Wozniacki's injury is apparently rather serious--two displaced discs. I'll post more information as I get it.

Most people were comfortably predicting a fifth straight French Open championship for Raphael Nadal, but Elena Dementieva got it right.

Doesn't Tennis Channel know that people want to see archived matches after they've seen live matches? When the live streams are done, the archived match function is disabled, also.

Then there's the matter of NBC, which had the rights to several big matches, and which denied U.S. tennis fans from seeing them live. That means that we were not able to see Maria Sharapova's match, nor could we see one of the biggest upsets in recent French Open history (pardon the foray into ATP tennis, but this is big) until after the fact. Of course, where I live, we couldn't have seen them anyway; the French Open was precluded by the Children's Miracle Network telethon.

As sad and frustrating as it was to see Jelena Dokic retire in her French Open match against Elena Dementieva, there is some good news: Doctors say there is no long-term damage--she just needs to heal.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im going to send Dick Ebersol a certified letter complaining about their bs coverage

Anonymous said...

You have no idea how corrupt the tennis telethon pre-emption was this year.

I spent two days getting my local affiliate to pre-empt their low-budget secondary HD channel programming to show Sunday's tennis. They finally agreed (afterall, they showed the tennis on their HD subchannel last year even though few were educated on the DTV transition back then).

On Thursday they called me and let me know that NBC was denying their tennis broadcast on the HD subchannel.

I then talked to two representatives at NBC and their message was that either the affiliate shows the programming on the primary channel, or no programming at all. I've brought this up on various blogs. One person replied (that I confirmed) that FOX took the exact opposite approach with the telethon and their Sunday NASCAR broadcast - that is, FOX let their Albany affiliate put NASCAR on the HD subchannel.

So we got to miss a great upset (not to mention my first chance of getting to see Raffa over a clean digital signal). Now I get a week of ESPN2's fuzzy, compressed video (after-all, they have to show their idiot scroll bar all the time).

If you ever see the NBC hulu commercials, where they kidding-ly brag about treating their viewers like laboratory rats, consider that there is usually some truth in most humor.....

Diane said...

I'm furious about it, too. I had to sit there--as I'm sure both of you did--and see Rafa get upset via an electronic scoreboard.

Anonymous said...

Diane, as this involves NBC's "abuse" of the FCC regulated airwaves, we might get some relief by filing a complaint with the FCC.

It's very easy to file a complaint. They have an online form at

https://esupport.fcc.gov/sform2000/formF!input.action?form_page=2000F

I selected NBC as the company name in 2.c.

For the details in 2.d. I wrote:

______________________________


This complaint concerns abuse of the digital subchannel:

Every May, several NBC affiliates preempt weekend programming for a telethon. Last year, WFLA (the Tampa, FL affiliate) showed the NBC programming on their 8.2 subchannel. This year NBC denied them that right.

We taxpayers funded the digital transition. I understand that a key bedrock of subchannel use is:

"All uses of subchannels must be consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity, which applies to everything that a broadcaster does".

NBC is violating the public interest by insisting that their affiliates black out content rather than present it on a digital subchannel.

FYI, When faced with the exact same situation, FOX allowed their Albany affiliate to display content on the subchannel.

Please keep me updated on the status of this complaint. Thank you.

______________________________



It may be a "shot in the dark", but the FCC representative informed me that NBC would have 45 days to respond (that is, of course if the FCC considers this a valid complaint).

I would think that anyone in a "telethon" area where the local affiliate didn't carry the tennis on the digital subchannel could file this complaint. As the subchannels are carried by the cable companies, prohibiting NBC from the subchannel blackout would solve our yearly problem (as well as resolve other conflicts, like last years US OPEN finals).

Diane said...

Anon, thank you for sharing this information with us. I urge everyone so affected to complain to the FCC.