NBC Needs To Get A Grip–Or Lose Its Grip On Wimbledon
July 5, 2009 by Bill Sobel
Filed under Rants & Raves
I am a big fan on NBC, particularly the Sports division, (especially since I started my career there) however Staci Kramer’s view of Wimbeldon coverage is interesting.
by Staci D. Kramer/PaidContent via Forbes.com
I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news.
What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs.
That’s because General Electric ( GE – news – people )’s NBC Universal values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.
This isn’t like the Olympics, where NBC has-and as Jeff Zucker stressed to me recently, will continue-to time shift key events to prime evening hours to maintain traffic and ad dollars for an incredibly expensive event.
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