I apologize for the impending return to negativity. I would have much preferred to put this beef in a Feedback box of some kind, but NBC's Olympics web site has no such apparatus. So here we go.
I'm trying to watch the Finland-Canada hockey game on CNBC. Or, at the very least, I was trying. I've now given up, because I know I'm not going to see any goals.
The rules of the Olympic tournament are geared towards fast action. Faceoffs and other timeouts happen too swiftly to provide for a commercial break. Typically, as one sees in televised soccer, such a situation means that the network will decline to break for commercials at all, and find other ways to invasively advertise. This is considered standard practice in televised sport, for the simple reason that if your average viewer misses anything important because a commercial was shown instead of, say, TWO FIRST PERIOD GOALS IN A ROW, they are likely to become upset. (More on the capitalized text in a moment.)
Did CNBC follow those unwritten guidelines yesterday, during the USA-Slovakia hockey game? Yes. As Ronald Reagan might claim, I don't recall any commercial breaks during game action. And bravo to the producers for showing the game without interruption; it was one of the best hockey games I've seen in years, and I saw all of it. A-plus.
But did they do likewise today, during a titanic Canada-Finland matchup with major implications for the elimination seeding? No, they didn't. And sure enough, I just witnessed the nightmare scenario for NBC: both of Finland's first two goals, arguably the most important portion of the game so far, were preempted by separate commercial breaks. F-minus.
It's not like the game was a snoozer or something. Roberto Luongo needed to make ten saves in the first eight minutes. Finland was absolutely bombarding Luongo. A goal was inevitable. NBC should have known better. But I can understand missing one goal. While that first goal should have been enough to mortify any decent producer/director into staying with subsequent game action under any circumstance, I can at least allow the decision-maker a second chance. Everyone deserves one mulligan, but you have to at least give the disaster its due, and act accordingly in its wake. So to risk running another commercial, and get burned again, is absolutely unforgiveable.
I'm not enough of a consumer to boycott companies like Lenovo and eBay based on their sponsorship. I already believe that ThinkPads are inferior, and that eBay is quite possibly the Internet's version of the Antichrist. But it suffices to say that I have stopped watching Finland vs. Canada and will not turn it on again. Why should I? All I'm getting is the shitty parts inbetween the goals, so I can just read about it later.
So, if you're NBC or CNBC, consider this my message to you:
I'm trying to watch the Finland-Canada hockey game on CNBC. Or, at the very least, I was trying. I've now given up, because I know I'm not going to see any goals.
The rules of the Olympic tournament are geared towards fast action. Faceoffs and other timeouts happen too swiftly to provide for a commercial break. Typically, as one sees in televised soccer, such a situation means that the network will decline to break for commercials at all, and find other ways to invasively advertise. This is considered standard practice in televised sport, for the simple reason that if your average viewer misses anything important because a commercial was shown instead of, say, TWO FIRST PERIOD GOALS IN A ROW, they are likely to become upset. (More on the capitalized text in a moment.)
Did CNBC follow those unwritten guidelines yesterday, during the USA-Slovakia hockey game? Yes. As Ronald Reagan might claim, I don't recall any commercial breaks during game action. And bravo to the producers for showing the game without interruption; it was one of the best hockey games I've seen in years, and I saw all of it. A-plus.
But did they do likewise today, during a titanic Canada-Finland matchup with major implications for the elimination seeding? No, they didn't. And sure enough, I just witnessed the nightmare scenario for NBC: both of Finland's first two goals, arguably the most important portion of the game so far, were preempted by separate commercial breaks. F-minus.
It's not like the game was a snoozer or something. Roberto Luongo needed to make ten saves in the first eight minutes. Finland was absolutely bombarding Luongo. A goal was inevitable. NBC should have known better. But I can understand missing one goal. While that first goal should have been enough to mortify any decent producer/director into staying with subsequent game action under any circumstance, I can at least allow the decision-maker a second chance. Everyone deserves one mulligan, but you have to at least give the disaster its due, and act accordingly in its wake. So to risk running another commercial, and get burned again, is absolutely unforgiveable.
I'm not enough of a consumer to boycott companies like Lenovo and eBay based on their sponsorship. I already believe that ThinkPads are inferior, and that eBay is quite possibly the Internet's version of the Antichrist. But it suffices to say that I have stopped watching Finland vs. Canada and will not turn it on again. Why should I? All I'm getting is the shitty parts inbetween the goals, so I can just read about it later.
So, if you're NBC or CNBC, consider this my message to you:
posted by Jeff at
4:24 PM
1 Comments:
Guess what the final score was. 2-0 Finland. Apparently the Finns went into a dump-and-chase shell after the two goals. So the ONLY good parts of the game happened during commercials. I'm horrified. Maybe I'm the only person in America who hates this, but it doesn't make me wrong.
By
Jeff, at 10:33 AM
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