The one black mark on ESPN's otherwise fantastic coverage of the WC has been the scheduling of WC Primetime. The show itself is very well concieved: two hours of extended highlights of the day's matches without divulging the results (à la Match of the Day in the UK), some analysis, and a little bit of fluff to appeal to non soccer fans ("Journeys through South Africa with my dad" for example). Perfect for people who are busy during the day and want to catch up in the evening without having to watch 2 or 3 games in their entirety. The big problem is ESPN doesn't seem to have assigned a fixed time for the show, so since the beginning of the WC it's been programmed as early as 7 pm and as late as 1 am EDT. It has also started late on a couple of occasions due to CWS baseball games lasting longer than their alloted time. Finally tonight, it seems to have been trashed altogether--it was scheduled for 10 pm EDT on ESPN2, but once again the baseball game preceding ran long, ending at 10:55. And now, instead of starting WC Primetime 55 minutes late, ESPN has apparently decided to show a replay of the USA-Algeria game--why and why at least no "Program Alert" message on the crawler? I understand ESPN and ESPN2 have other priorities besides the WC, but why not give WC Primetime a fixed slot, say 10 pm EDT/ 7 pm PDT on ESPN Classic? Viewers would know exactly where/when to go for their daily WC fix. Two thumbs down on ESPN for this one--and two thumbs way up for the rest of the coverage.
I have been disappointed by the overlap with the CWS but it's hard to blame ESPN for not having a fixed time. They have a lot of other content to air right now and by keeping it on either ESPN or ESPN2 they are allowing more people to have access to it. I for one would be unable to watch it if it was on ESPN Classic. If you see a baseball game scheduled for a 3 hour block just assume that the show after will not start on time.
I thought they would have done a 1 hour highlight show to broadcast nightly on ABC at say 10pm, like the Olympics. Yes it is Primetime but it's summer and not much else is on at that time. Maybe the sport isn't there yet, perhaps in 2014...
typical ESPN. They did the same with World Cup Live on Sunday - moved it up a half hour because of a rain delay so my DVR taping only caught the tail end of it. I too wish they'd put it on ESPN Classic and offer it on ESPN3. To be honest I thought surely with Wimbledon there would have been some similar shennanigans going on with game broadcasts being "trimmed" - I guess that FIFA broadcast contract is iron-clad.