What is Wrong With NBC Sports?

With only one weekly football game, no baseball, and no basketball, how has NBC Sports managed to become the worst national broadcaster of sports in the country?

Well, that’s a pretty simple answer: When you screw up the Olympics as badly as they did, and when you consistently mangle your tennis coverage, you end up with a well-earned reputation at being failures at your job. The main problem: NBC refuses to show major sporting events live, insisting instead on putting them in “prime time,” showered with analysis and features. Just show us the damn game/match/event.

There isn’t a lot that NBC Sports is trusted with. But when they are trusted with covering an event, we expect them to do it well. I can put up with glitches in broadcasts and even technical problems — they happen, but what I can’t put up with is not showing the events you are supposed to be showing.

NBC ruined the Olympics in 2008 by insisting on showing the “marquee” events in prime time, even if that meant a long tape delay prior to airing. In today’s world of the Internet and instant news, it is impossible to keep any suspense until the taped coverage begins. So those of us on the West Coast particularly, knew the results of everything that was going to be aired on NBC on the night of Olympic coverage. So what did we do? We didn’t watch it.

Of course, when we really wanted to watch something, NBC forced us to do so on their Web site. Occasionally things were on another channel, which was nice, but too often we were forced to watch these great sporting events in inferior quality on the web. The Olympics was a massive failure for viewers all over the country due to NBC.

This week, they were at it again, as they chose to air a taped Wimbledon match that they damn sure knew was a three set drubbing, rather than show the only American man left in the tournament in the best match of the tournament so far. Viewers in the United States were forced to watch Andy Roddick play Lleyton Hewitt on the Internet (NBCSports.com again), once again in inferior quality, while the television showed a taped, three-hour old Roger Federer drubbing.

Even the New York Times says it is time for NBC to walk away.

The problem is, NBC is convinced that us viewers want to watch a giant production, in prime time, with analysis, of every major sporting event. We don’t. We want to watch the sports, live, as they happen.

NBC screwed up the French Open as well, and they have certainly done this to us sports fans many other times in the past. For that matter, we went through this at Wimbledon last year, too.

ESPN gets it. For all of the things that I don’t like about the Worldwide Leader, at least they show things live. If a big soccer match starts at 3am, ESPN will show it live. Same with tennis and baseball. Now if only they would learn that when they do show things on tape (sometimes it’s necessary), they remove the final score of what they are showing from their ticker. But baby steps…

In fact, ESPN’s coverage of the first week of Wimbledon was fantastic. DIRECTV even provided a mix channel that let me pick what match I wanted to watch — live, at 4am. It wasn’t until the second week, when NBC played their exclusivity card that all of a sudden I couldn’t watch tennis anymore.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in the story that NBC wouldn’t allow the Pittsburgh Penguins to show a playoff game on a big screen outside of their arena, something that the Pens had done throughout the playoffs. They continued to air any games broadcast on FSN, but NBC put the kibosh on their broadcast being used.

Yeah, I get it — it’s all about advertising. NBC wants more people watching their broadcasts of games at the times they want them too to maximize revenue. But at what cost to the actual broadcast? Sports don’t work in tape delays, and sports broadcasts don’t work when the top priority is the advertisers and not the fans.

Say what you will about ESPN, but at least they put the game first.

NBC, on the other hand, could apparently care less about the sports it is broadcasting. When that is the case, then they need to get out.

When it comes to ranking the sports broadcasters in the United States, the only thing that is clear is the NBC is dead last. The day that NBC is outbid for the Olympics and tennis coverage is going to be a great day for sports fans who actually want to watch sports when they happen. Until then, I’ll just continue to not watch sports on NBC, since I already know the results of what they are showing.

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