NBC sucks

So ems texts me and asks me if I'm watching tennis on NBC. Of course I don't notice because I'm out of the room or whatever. So she calls, all excited, it's in the fifth set. I'm thinking hmm, Federer let Soderling hang around for two more sets? She says no, Federer's losing in the fifth set.

Whereupon I discover that she's watching last year's Wimbledon final. Except that she doesn't realize it. (She's not much of a tennis fan, so it's understandable she didn't pick up on details about the match.)

The problem is that Federer dispatched Soderling quickly, and of course the guide will show French Open Final for the entire time ... but instead of showing a crawl at the bottom of the screen to let you know what's going on (like every other network in the world would), or putting something up on the screen, NBC stupidly airs part of that match unedited ... complete with their "LIVE" text at the bottom of the score.

Why is this bad? Well, imagine that you don't know much about tennis, so you figure you'll watch the French Open for a bit. You tune in to see this. You don't know clay or grass or what, you don't know any of that, so you're watching this epic match, and all excited ... and then when it's over, NBC cuts back to Federer talking about the jackass fan. You don't realize what happened. In fact, you might be confused. Why is Federer smiling if he just lost? And if there's no one to explain it to you, it might discourage you from following the sport.

Okay, that's a lot of words. A better explanation? It's bad because it's clearly incorrect. That was absolutely not live. NBC should know better, except that they haven't done a good job on sporting events since they lost the AFC games to CBS. The only reason they do NHL games is because the NHL is desperate and NBC isn't paying rights fees, and they're doing the Olympics because they tricked the IOC into a long-term deal back before the IOC knew what it was doing. (I mean, not that they know now.)

So anyway, NBC Sports sucks. again.

Update: ESPN sent me a survey about tennis coverage. I told them "don't be like NBC", oh yes I did.

You're talking about what?

Today, I saw one of the greatest tennis matches ever. I'm not much of a tennis fan, although I do watch occasionally (well, sometimes I watch for tennis, and sometimes for, well ... I'd guess I followed women's tennis to some degree since my teens), but even I could appreciate what was happening here.

Roger Federer is one of the best players in the modern era, perhaps one of the best ever. He's dominated tennis like very few in history. On the other side, Rafael Nadal is one of the best young players in the modern era, but prior to this year, very few people knew how good he was, other than on clay (he's won the French Open four straight times, the last three over Federer). If it weren't for the one, the other might be dominating in a way that would make Tiger jealous, although some might say the competition from the one spurs the other ...

Anyway, for a change, Nadal beat Federer on grass, snapping Federer's streak of Wimbledon titles at 5 ... he nearly took it in straight sets, then Federer won two straight tiebreakers to force a fifth set, but he couldn't break Nadal's serve in the final three sets (no fifth-set tiebreaker at Wimbledon), and instead of becoming the first man in over 80 years to come back from two sets down, Nadal becomes the first in a quarter-century to win the French and Wimbledon in the same year.

It'll be on ESPN Classic tomorrow at 7 PM. I recommend you watch it ... it'll mean so much more than I could explain.


Random thought: my iPhone wasn't holding a charge very well, only going up to about 80% and draining more and more quickly. Finally, it ran out yesterday, so today I got it charged ... and it's back up to 100%. Funny, I didn't know it was one of those batteries. Good thing, too, because it's the standard can't-replace-it-for-less-than-a-fortune Apple battery.

Well, you know, Microsoft and Apple have more in common than you think