Posted in Media
4 comments
09/29 2010

NBC’s Inane Decision to Tape Delay the Ryder Cup

Posted by Shane Bacon.

When you wake up Saturday morning, fresh off a fun Friday night and getting ready for an afternoon of college football, you should be greeted with an exciting surprise.

The Ryder Cup should be live, giving you the opportunity to to see matches finishing up across the pond, hoping for your team to gain a couple of extra points before the all-important Sunday singles matches. That should be what happens.

But it won’t. Nope. Not with NBC. The network that decided to tape delay Michael Phelps’ run for Olympic history, and continued delays of the Winter Olympics and Wimbledon, has decided once again that live coverage be damned. On Saturday, the second day of the three-day team matches pitting 12 Europeans against 12 Americans, NBC will show the coverage on tape delay.

It’s interesting to point out that on Friday, when ESPN has the rights to the opening matches, golf will be live. The coverage will kick off at 2:30 AM ET (11:30 PM for west coasters!!), and go until the matches conclude. This will give those real golf fans a chance to watch what unfolds live if they choose to do so.

What’s interesting about this decision is why NBC would pick one of the three days to delay the coverage. It’s one of the best events of the year in the game of golf, and while it is a few time zones away, it isn’t like it’s impossible to find a place for these matches. Instead, people like myself (read: golf dorks) will be forced to find feeds online and sit, hunched over, in front of a computer watching grainy video of the matches in real time.

NBC – it’s 2010. We have devices that will literally sling your cable to a computer continents away so you can watch real time television on your laptop. Every third house has some device to record things so you can watch them later. Why make this decision just so you can show golf at more of a prime time?

The decision seems ridiculous, but there isn’t much we can do about it. For far too long, it seems NBC finds the best possible decision, and then picks whatever is the complete opposite.

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Posted on September 29, 2010 at 2:08PM
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