NBC needs to stop acting like it’s 1976
Listen, I know I bitch a lot. I do. I’m sorry. I wish I didn’t, but sometimes, things are justified. Like when someone isn’t paying attention and nearly sideswipes you on your bike. Or when a waitress blatantly ignores your table because her friends are at the one next to you and she’s catching up on the latest high school gossip.
Or this. NBC. Still showing tape-delayed tennis.
Insanity. Pure fucking insanity.
The thing is, I understand why they do it. They have a show called “The Today Show” and they must show it in all time zones at the same time each day of the week because it draws a lot of viewers because it’s a habit, like coffee and morning craps and cereal. People tune in to see what’s going on in the world and what’s up with the latest celebrity or “Bachelorette” or style. It’s part of life. This show brings in more viewers so it takes precedent. That’s the same reason why I spend two hours on a lengthy column about the merits of match play, busting my ass to make it as good as it can be, and then see my 200-word story on Tiger Woods’ new beard make the front page of Yahoo!. It’s the business. I get it.
What I don’t get is why NBC still bids for sports. Why, for the first week of Wimbledon, I’m given all the live tennis I want over at ESPN2, more tennis than even me, a sports freak that works at home, can swallow. It’s like meeting a girl that will give you the craziest, dirtiest pleasures imaginable with any part of her body, but when you touch her jeans, she slaps your hand away like you’re a black widow crawling up her leg.
The first week of Wimbledon is great. The second week is the meat and potatoes, the place that babies happen. And right when it starts getting good, NBC treats it like teh ugly sister nobody wants.
I know any idiot will make this “It’s 2011” argument, but it is. It’s 2011. I have a thing the size of a Highlights magazine that I can watch live tennis on, but when I want to have it plastered on my $2500 TV through my $150 cable, nothing will happen. I must wait. NBC slaps my hand.
I just wish they’d stop getting sports. If you want the rights to the weekend, when there isn’t something more pressing happening on your network, that would be fine. Bid on those. Get the finals and people will tune in when you’re ready. And if you’re going to force half the nation to watch one of the best tennis matches of the year on tape delay, like they will with Nadal-Murray on Friday, at least give us a chance to watch it on your high-definition feed on the computer. But you won’t. We will be sending out tweets and Facebook messages and e-mails tomorrow morning trying to find the best illegal feed, which is almost an insult to the world “illegal” since really, there isn’t a legal way to catch the action.
Sometimes it’s a mystery why certain companies struggle. With NBC, it’s a no-brainer. It’s a company that thrived back when the nation was clueless, and still sits around thinking we don’t know better. We do, and you guys continue to be left in the dust. I just wish you wouldn’t take us with you.
