NBC Drops The Ball Again

Last night, NBC failed to nationally televise one of the Winter Olympic events that EVERYONE wants to see: USA vs Canada in Men's Hockey. Instead, they passed it off to their sister station, MSNBC. Most cable outlets do not carry MSNBC in High Definition. HD helps enhance the quality of sporting events, most specifically hockey, because it allows more vision of the ice, creating a more pleasurable viewing experience.



The game was awesome, and quite possibly will be the best hockey game of the year (knock on wood.) It had everything exciting about hockey; great players, great plays, intense, drama ridden moments. Those moments where you are so nervous that the puck could trickle in at any point in time and change the entire face of the game.

It's events like this that make hockey great - and almost finally putting it back on the national map after a couple year hiatus from that crippling lock out.

The focus of this post isn't all about the game though - it's about how NBC execs yet again messed up a perfect ratings opportunity. Last night, my understanding of what was on National NBC consisted of: Ice Dancing, Men's Super Combined (consisting of Bode Miller's gold medal run,) probably Bobsled and either Curling or Speed Skating. The only event that warranted our attention was Bode Miller's run.

So the alternative to how NBC could have solved this problem? A) Show the hockey game on NBC and during the intermissions, show ice dance/bob sled whatever, then afterward, around 10PM, show the Super Combined. It would of boosted NBC's ratings without a doubt.

I know why NBC didn't broadcast it nationally. International Hockey has nearly zero commercials during the game, similar to soccer. This obviously inhibits NBC's advertising dollars. Although most games on MSNBC are "brought to you with limited commercial interruption" by X. They assumed people would rather watch Ice Dancing. Who would? There was such an outcry on Twitter that "NBC" was a higher trending topic than "Team USA" or "Team Canada." Most of the tweets were rants about how dumb NBC was for not having MSNBC HD available enough places while also not having it national. There's still some people without cable who couldn't of watched the game.

From NBC's perspective though, as the sole national broadcaster of NHL games (I'm not counting Versus) - wouldn't it make sense for them to broadcast a hockey game and try and boost the ratings for a sport they broadcast? It's only going to be another 2 weeks until the NHL is back on NBC, and I would think that they need to try to milk the sport as much as possible - even if that means losing $$$ right now, they may make more money - consistently - later down the line for their weekend/playoff games. I guess I'm just not a businessman and don't know what sports draw which ratings, but it doesn't make sense to me.

It's just become too easy to make fun of NBC these days. What a fall from grace for them. From being the original and having those legendary shows like Seinfeld and Cheers to be the idiots that approve of The Jay Leno Show and The Biggest Loser but cancel Southland and Conan O'Brien. Unbeleiveable. Good luck Comcast!