They have settled their schedule, the only matches on cable are Burnley-Man City on Friday (USA), Newcastle-Aston Villa on Saturday (NBC) and Man Utd-Wolves on Monday (USA).
Week 2's a little better, with a Saturday night (3:00) game and Super Sunday on USA, but it's at least Week 3 before a Saturday morning game is on USA.
Thanks for your research folks. I really miss the old days when virtually every match time slot was on an NBC TV channel. Obviously they're rationing matches on TV so as to try to drive everyone to a Peacock subscription, especially now that they're raising the cost of that. If streaming worked as well as linear TV+DVR has for decades, I'd be pining less for those salad days of supreme TV coverage in our country.
Today, on opening day of the season NBC decided to put all the 12:30 & 15:00 GMT games on Peacock in further hopes of convincing everyone who hasn't already bought Peacock to do so now. Implying that they think it's as good as they used to offer on their linear/cable channels. Today, we saw a few more examples of why their streaming production still has work to do to realize that parity. 1. When the AFC-NFFC match ended, they abruptly cut away seconds after FT to show BHA-LTFC. Rather than letting Jon Champion & Andy Townshend offer some closing reflections, rather than showing post-match scenes on the pitch and in the stands. All while the NBC team were on the pitch at St.James with a full 2.5 hours before that kickoff. Would there have been more post-match coverage if the AFC-NFFC game hadn't been 30mins late finishing because of late KO? I'm not so sure. And I thought that was one of the big advantages of non-linear, parallel streaming... that you could essentially cover each and every match in a dedicated way, not having to clip the finish of one match because of the start of another? Apparently not. 2. About an hour later I wanted to see what NBC's team ended up showing and saying about the AFC match so, since today is all on Peacock, I had to figure out that of all the other 3PM games that were streaming the only one that seemed to have any NBC halftime show was the BHA game. So I caught the AFC highlights/comments there. 3. And then another 45 mins or so later, I wanted to see what NBC was showing/saying about all the matches, maybe some coach/player interviews that they often do (no such luck today) and also the pre-match of the 5:30PM NUFC-AVFC match. So again I had to find where they were streaming that. And again it was the BHA-LTFC stream that was carrying all of that (all other streams stopped shortly after FT). How difficult and unintuitive is that? If any fans were coming to watch the pregame coverage for NUFC-AVFC they would've had to figure that out just like I did. NBC did not seem to think they should put that pregame coverage on the front of their NUFC-AVFC stream... which didn't start until KO from what I could tell. All in all it's cumbersome, user-unfriendly, depriving fans of content that used to be normally shown, and very easily found by people and DVR's, when it was all primarily homed on NBCSN. Rant over. Actually probably not. To be continued. p.s. Maybe feedback like this will find it's way into the hands of some NBC executive. That's honestly one of the main reasons I still post rants like this.
Watched Goal Rush today, two thoughts: I don;t like having a default game (Luton at Brighton today). I prefer pure whiparound a la CBS' Golazao Show. Near the end, I flipped to West Ham at Bournemouth. Single-game stream quality seems to be much higher than Goal Rush.
The graphics were the tell. The NBC graphics were used on Brighton-Luton and the other three matches had the world feed IMG graphics, so Brighton-Luton was NBC's full coverage 10AM game. You've been watching (and griping about) the EPL on NBC/Peacock for years now so I'm surprised you didn't catch on to this.
If the graphics you are referring to showed up on the tiles in my Roku menu then that was too subtle for me to catch. If the graphics are inside of the video contents, once you start streaming… Either way, it’s subpar in my book. And one which could be pretty easily corrected if the producers wanted to.
So I wasn't able to watch the BRE-TOT match live on Peacock but wanted to zip through it after it concluded, which was >1 hour ago. And yet Peacock still says "Replay Available Soon" Can someone remind me how long it take them to release their replays? Edit: I checked back just now and the replay is available, >1.5 hours after FT, but better than 2, 3 or 4 hours delayed I guess! Also, the match started & finished late so the replay might've been released more like 1 hour after FT. Is that what's typical? Should be much earlier me thinks. (Not to mention why there is any delay at all? Technically it shouldn't be hard to make it available within a few minutes, no?) p.s. I know that I could google for the highlights package which might somehow be miraculously available sooner but I doubt I'd be able to avoid spoilers, and frankly I don't think the highlights packages are very good in general so I prefer to fast-forward through the actual match broadcast. p.p.s. This odd delay of replays, is just one of many, many examples of why things were better, easier, more user-friendly with the old linear TV/DVR model. Obviously we aren't going back to those days anytime, or at least anytime soon, but my main point is that streamers should endeavor to avoid going backwards or making the experience worse for their customers. IMHO the thinking should be "be at least as good as the old platform was, and then hopefully advance to be better than that"
I'm talking about the graphics during the telecast, the scorebug most notably, it's easy to tell if NBC is using theirs (hence a game they're covering as if it were on cable) or the world feed (which have changed this year to a more colorful look)
Sure those graphics are quite obvious I agree. But that doesn't help when you're at the menu level of wondering which of several simultaneous games/streams you should open in order to get the NBC team/coverage. AFAIK there's no quick, easy, obvious way of knowing this without randomly opening each one.
Yes, logically there should be a core stream that begins with the start of the pregame for the early kickoff and runs continuously until the end of the post-game of the last match. Basically, what NBCSN showed from 7h00 to 15h00 most Saturdays back in the day. It also makes it easier for people that sleep in a bit. They can still just click Peacock and select the core stream to play from the beginning. Isn't it in NBC's interest to have people watch more of Peacock? When they just kill the stream shortly after the final whistle, they are essentially inviting viewers to turn off the TV or at least ask themselves "what should I watch now?". The chances are higher that they keep watching Peacock if the stream just rolls into the next match w/o the viewer having to touch anything.
They should copy what MLS/AppleTV did: 9:30am: EPL Preview on Peacock. 9:55am: Send viewers to the game they've previously selected. As those 10am games end, go to the game(s) with more time left. When the last whistle blows, terminate the broadcast, assuming there's live studio coverage on NBC/USA. Between this and the Big Ten going to NBC, I've got to wonder if the NBC brass regret shutting down NBCSN.
That really does seem like one of the more regretful moves in recent years. Even with viewership moving farther and farther into streaming only, not having NBCSN has led to some sports content on CNBC and that's just nonsensical.
See that's one of the things that bugs me. When I watch a game, ESPECIALLY when it's MY TEAM, when the game ends I don't want to quickly cut away to something else that I didn't choose to watch. I think they should leverage the non-linear, parallelability of streaming to maximize the coverage value of each game, i.e. stick with the post-match coverage/comments/etc for any particular game. It's often possible, as was the case that I was citing last weekend.
And how much "streaming" is stuff like Fubo or Hulu? Yes, you're streaming compared to satellite or cable, but those people are still paying for the channel. I hate articles like "Cord-cutters are causing the death of live channels" that talk about how people are moving towards Hulu or Fubo. They're still paying for the channels. The other annoying articles are the ones that talk about: "So, you've recently decided to cut the cord. Here's how to watch the big event without cable" that aren't much other than advertisement for Fubo or Hulu. Society in general needs to re-evaluate terms. Cable: Services like Comcast, Spectrum, Cox or any other service that uses coaxial cable to send a signal into a box. Satellite: The big dish on the roof or in the yard. IPTV: U-Verse, FiOS and whatever the heck else runs over a phone line, fiber or some sort of proprietary system. Yes, this may operate similar to cable, but it's not cable. Streaming: A service that includes a bunch of linear channels, a cloud-based DVR and on-demand content. Examples include Philo, YouTube TV and Hulu. Direct-To-Consumer: A customer pays a company for their content delivered directly to them without a provider. Examples include Peacock, Paramount+ and Disney+. My prediction: Eventually, the streaming services in the paragraph above will get so expensive, they'll be similar to cable/IPTV/satellite. They're not there yet, but as the channel owners continue to raise prices for their channels, I can see a repeat of what's happening with cable/satellite/IPTV. Eventually, people will just churn their DTC services while putting all their faith in the algorithms (You watched this show on Paramount+. Try this similar show or the same actor on Netflix) or word-of-mouth. The FAST services (which are essentially just antenna TV) will be good for background noise or mindless crap. I don't foresee a time when people talk en masse about what they watched last night on the Hell's Kitchen Roku channel. Getting back on track, the $10 version of Peacock could have had a live stream of NBCSN buried in that list with all those other channels. They've already made the local (to the viewer) NBC a $10 exclusive. The only time CNBC makes sense for live sports is during the Olympics and the last matchday of the EPL season when every team plays at the same time. It may make sense during the random time there's some sort of overflow situation needed, such as a live game on NBC or USA running long and there's no other option. "Our second game is starting now on CNBC. We'll join it in progress when this game finishes."
Hulu Live, Fubo, and Sling all lost subscribers in the hundreds of thousands last quarter. Only YouTube TV increased its subscriber base and it was by several hundred thousand less than the losses by the others. Even when you count those live streaming options, we're now well under 60% of households in the US having any kind of paid live TV option. The real kicker is Nielsen finally started counting those live streamers as cable or broadcast, instead of streaming, if they were being used to watch a channel like NBC or ESPN. With that said, the latest report shows that only 49.6% of TV and movie viewing was done through cable and broadcast channels last quarter, the first time it's ever been under 50%. I'm sure some of that is due to the writer's and actor's strikes causing delays in new content being filmed, but it's still following the trend that's been happening since 2014.
Maybe not. We're starting to see cable and "streaming cable" carve out cheaper packages sans sports channels and I expect that trend to continue. Having your sports products integrated with Law & Order and some original programs keeps your channel in the main bundles, whereas NBCSN likely could have been an easy cut from primary bundles. Being part of Comcast, I'm sure NBC was better in tune with the changing landscape than anyone else when they nerfed NBCsn.
Watching Goal Rush on Peacock at the moment. The video is 5 to 10 seconds ahead of the audio. Been that way for the 15 minutes I’ve been watching. Stopping and restarting the stream doesn’t seem to help. Not sure that it’s NBC‘s fault but it’s hard to imagine that someone hasn’t fix this already. Alas, still lots of growing pains for streaming.
Kudos to Rebecca and the NBC producers to open today’s coverage with 8 mins on mental health in pro football. And with the musings of old vets Dixon and Mustoe that were both jarring and unsurprising.
NBC will have to buy EFL if they want EPL. http://www.awfulannouncing.com/socc...onal-rights-english-football-league-2028.html
Interesting. Didn’t read the whole thing. Honestly when I saw the source was the daily mail, I kind of thought “well let’s see if this really turns out to be true“ But if it does end up happening this way, I’m kind of surprised, because I always thought the EPL wanted to be their own separate entity in nearly all ways, but especially TV rights. All that said, if EFL showed up on Peacock, I wouldn’t mind at all.
I wonder if the non Super League clubs decided to tie it all together to make it less lucrative for those bigger clubs to break away.
This is all at least five years away, according to the piece. Who knows what the streaming landscape will look like at that point?