Yeah, I'm probably in that camp too. But not when there is no league play to watch! BUT as I think about it more, I guess what NBC is doing is holding off on making any final refund decision until the next EPL decision deadline, which has now been extended to 4/30 I believe. And if by some miracle they restart the season this spring/summer, even if matches are behind closed doors, I assume NBC would just extend our 2019-20 subscription until whenever the season actually finishes. That of course assumes that they actually complete the final 8-9 rounds of matches still pending, rather than declaring it finished as is or "null and void". And that of course is an ABSOLUTELY HUGE decision for the league, and for the clubs (and their fans) who were still battling for key spots at the top and bottom of the table. And that's just talking about one league. There are so so many others.
https://sports.nbcsports.com/2020/0...alk-live-hosted-by-mike-tirico-debuts-monday/ Mike Tirico has a new show coming weekdays at noon ET on NBCSN, but I still see Sky Sports News on my guide during that time. Sidenote: I really don't like how NBCSN puts their own ticker on top of the Sky one.
And the FanZone of which I mean (one fan of each team announcing the game) is sorely missed, at least by me.
Yeah, probably SkySports days are numbered (for us NBCSN subscribers in USA). It's not too much of a show any more since COVID-19 hit big. But I do still skip through it to get a few tidbits here and there. The fact that each halfhour is almost a carbon copy of the previous halfhour makes it faster! And I do kinda like seeing the government ministers giving their (virus) wartime speeches. I literally haven't watched Trump or Cuomo once doing their speeches, but I've seen quite a few Brits!!
I guess sky sports news broadcast is now done? At least on NBC. The last two days my DVR auto-recording of SSN has only delivered “football flex“ and sadly for NBC they seemed to show the same episode if flex both Monday and Tuesday.
Yeah, I was wondering why my DVR wasn't picking it up. I had them in the "scheduled recordings" list (and still do), but when I go to watch them later, they're not there. I chalked it up to my DVR being too full or something, but didn't really buy into that logic.
They should replace it with the new sky sports football show. I believe its a 2 hour show on sky. Pretty good podcast but it would make a decent watch in that old ssn slot
Since it's now looking like the EPL may try to make a comeback in a few weeks, it got me thinking of NBC and the Stamford nerve center. To what extent will they be able to produce anything close to what they did before the shutdown? Here in CT we're still officially under stay-at-home orders for another week (5/20) and Stamford has one of the highest (if not the highest) per capita Covid-19 cases in the state, being 30 miles from NYC and a major commuter transport hub. I wonder how comfortable Rebecca and the 2 Robbies feel about coming back here? Let alone the army of production staff. Anyway has anyone heard any rumors or scuttlebutt about NBC's plans?
I would assume they will do what many other NBC Family studio programs have done. Maybe have one person in studio with everyone else remote from home.
I haven't been watching NBC shows, either before or after pandemic. But if you're right, then my guess is that good ole Ahmed Fareed would "get the nod" to schlep it into the Stamford studio. Rebecca being a new mom, based in Calif(?)... just hard to imagine her being the one. I guess at minimum all they have to figure out how to broadcast the live matches, then everything on top of that is just gravy? NBC's EPL coverage used to have such pretty rich production value... it would be interesting to see what they could reasonably muster in our new Covid world.
I really only watch CNBC from time to time and assume they will go along with how they have been doing things. Although some of their programs have been all remote from home, most of them seem to have 1 in studio person. Things could change in a month, but I don't expect three people in studio at once.
Now that the EPL has committed to restarting play June 17th, and they've shared some key info, including that there will be no simultaneous games, I wonder how NBC is going to carry those matches... all on NBCSN?... mixture between NBCSN & Gold? Have they said anything publicly yet?
There's no competition with NCAA sports, and even if the NHL resumes, those games are later. I don't know if NBCSN wants to pay Rebecca, Kyle, Robbie E., and Robbie M. for so long before, between, and after games. Whether they're together or separated, they need to be paid if they're on TV. The advantage of having four to six games on Saturday at 10:00 A.M. is that Premier League Live can preview multiple games. They have a lot of commercials, and watching a half hour before becomes even more worthless if it's just before one game and you're not a fan of one of those clubs. Instead of being able to show highlights of four to six games that just ended, I'm assuming there will be at least three start times on weekends, and maybe four. If the same highlights of the first game get shown after every game, it gets repetitive if you watch the whole day's coverage. With four to six games at once, people can watch Premier League Live before and/or after and watch a non-televised game on Gold. With one game at a time, people who are not interested in the game could also skip Premier League Live before and after. Before NBCSN announces how many games they will show, they need to know days and times, not just the fact that there will only be one game at a time. They should televise at least as many games as they would have, but if they televise all games it reduces the value of Gold for people like me who paid. One possibility is to sell Gold for the rest of season at half off the per game rate to get a little money from casual fans who don't have other sports to watch and are at home more. By half off I mean that if 30 percent of the games are left, sell Gold for 15 percent of the price before the season. They made two levels and I paid $59.99, so call it $60. 15 percent is $9. Additional subscribers at a lower rate provides additional revenue without making Gold more expensive to make and distribute. The Census gives a population estimate of 332,639,102 for July 1, 2020, which is in the future. If you call it 330,000,000, 1 in 10,000 people is 33,000, and multiplying by $9 would be $297,000 of revenue. I'm not guessing how many more people would subscribe at that rate, but an offer like that could easily provide six or more digits of revenue, and the discount would be stated on TV so people who watch but don't pay for Gold and people who look at sports on TV schedules or just scroll through channels could watch on TV and find out about the online offer. I don't know what NBCSN's plan is for 2020-2021, but if they want new fans to pay and keep paying, they can offer the rest of the season for $9 that doubles as $9 off Gold in 2020-2021 for people who pay for the whole season.
They just released the new EPL fixture list from 17 June up to 2 July. There are some overlapping matches, but not many. https://www.independent.co.uk/sport...t3zR1wkNO8gDw5FGeeDcfe8T3E#Echobox=1591291062
Sure looks like NBC is completely screwing over Gold customers with the new TV schedule since the matches are more spread out from a kickoff time perspective. June 17 through July 2 there are 32 PL matches. Only 6 of the 32 will be Gold matches while the other 26 will be on NBC or NBCSN. Normally, a given PL weekend will have 3-4 Gold matches. So now instead of live access to 30-40% of matches via Gold, we’re looking at <19%. June 17-July 2 TV Schedule
I was hoping they’d make such a concession, but I haven’t received any communication about it, nor can I find anything verifying that. The PL Pass page with the updated $9.99 price for the rest of the season still says Gold matches are live and the rest are available via replay after 9 p.m. EST, per usual.
I hope for your sake, and everyone else who doesn't get NBCSN as part of a TV bundle, that NBC does something "appropriate" for its customers who primarily stream. Me, I subscribe to both NBCSN (through cabletv) and Gold, but I'll be extremely happy if I can catch 90-100% of what I want to watch on conventional TV (NBC, NBCSN, etc). p.s. I wonder what they're going to do about the ancilliary content that used to run on NBCSN like pre-game shows, goal zone, match of the day/week, etc.
On the English podcasts I listen to there's lots of chatter about canned crowd noise being added to the matches. If this is true, I'm not sure if this would be added by the league-feed or if it's left up to each country's broadcaster, but if it's the latter... ...it would be great if NBC could somehow make it optional, i.e. maybe make it a SAP choice for those who do/don't want to hear the faked noise.
I read that in Bundesliga games were produced with both crowd noise and without it, and that it was up to the broadcasters to decide which one to use. I’m assuming it will be same here.
Yeah, big companies deciding what the average individual customer wants... always a good recipe. Couldn't they use the existing SAP technology to give individual customers a choice of how they want to hear it?
I’m pretty sure for Bundesliga broadcasts the crowd noise varies by broadcaster. So while the American broadcasts on Fox Sports have had crowd noise, I don’t think there was crowd noise initially in the UK (but is now). Honestly, I greatly prefer it with fake crowd noise. It’s just more natural and better while you’ve got a match on in the background. I may not care as much if I have a genuine rooting interest, but otherwise the noise does make a big difference for me. For EPL, UK broadcasters will have crowd noise, but viewers will have the option to turn it off (though it probably depends how you’ve accessed the match).