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What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
You may remember the days when the Grey Cup was carried in Canada by both CTV and CBC. It was a testament, I suppose, to how popular the final was, but it was also a tremendous waste of airtime, since if you could get one channel, chances were good the majority of Canadians could get the other one, as well. It never made much sense to me, although the argument could be made that some northern communities didn't have a CTV affiliate at the time, so viewers there weren't deprived of the big game,
Fast forward to 2022. The previously disastrous and money-losing reconstituted USFL is returning from the dead and this time, both NBC and FOX will be covering the action. Not on different days. Not different games. The same game on the same day at the same time.
For the first time since the Super Bowl was on two networks at once in 1967, the rivals will be carrying the debut contest of the USFL. They won't even be using different crews. FOX is producing the match and NBC will be carrying the same broadcast as its rival.
"For the debut simulcast, NBC Sports will handle pregame, halftime and postgame coverage, using its on-air, production, and technical personnel. Fox Sports will produce the game coverage, which both networks will carry, using its broadcasters, production, and technical staff. The same commercials will run on each network throughout the broadcast."
As many here know, the constant overruns of the NFL drive non-football fans like me crazy, because they end up delaying the primetime line-up that follows to uncertain hours and it's impossible to record anything with any assurance you'll actually get it. Now we have two networks broadcasting the same thing. Outside of the small publicity this may garner, I have no idea what NBC gains by essentially simulcasting FOX on its network.
To add insult to injury, the season starts in April, just a little over a month since the NFL's endless season comes to a stop. I'm going to have to start wiping Sundays off my TV network schedule. Taking up space on one station is bad enough. Two doing the exact same thing is completely ludicrous - even if it is just for the debut.
NBC And Fox Will Both Air USFL Opener In April, In First TV Network Sports Simulcast Since 1967
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
I wonder if any Canadian stations will also be taking the feed, making it possible for three places to be showing the same thing at once. CHCH was an affiliate of the original USFL back in 1983.
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Thread Starter- paterson1
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
I have noticed that for some matches during the Australian Open TSN has had two different broadcasts of the same match. One channel will have the ESPN coverage and another channel has mostly the same camera work but different commentary. They have done this for some golf tournaments before. TSN 1 could have the CBS coverage of the Masters and TSN 4 has the feed from another network or a golf channel, with totally different camera shots and commentary. I don't mind this at all.
TSN has been doing a good job with the Australian Open with an Australian correspondent who has been giving them some more localized material and focusing on the Canadians in the tournament.
- Hansa
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
For reasons that are unclear to me a 2007 New England Patriots–New York Giants game was carried simultaneously on CBS, NBC, and the NFL Network.
When the NFL announced its 2007 regular season schedule, the game was scheduled to air exclusively on the NFL Network, as was the case with all Saturday NFL games beginning with the 2006 television contract in an attempt to boost carriage of the NFL Network by cable providers.The game was also offered to local stations in each team's home market under a long-standing league policy for games televised on cable networks. In the case of the Patriots–Giants game, the local rights were originally sold to WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV (both ABC affiliates owned by Hearst-Argyle Television) in the Boston / [url=,_New_Hampshire]Manchester[/url] market, and MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV in the New York City market.[1][/url]It was a prime time matchup of regional rivals, but as the Patriots moved closer to a perfect season, the game become even more important. Therefore, the network increasingly promoted the game via television commercials[url=][2][/url] on other stations. It was clear the game was one of the most anticipated in recent history, and could therefore serve as an important promotion for the NFL Network, which had tried unsuccessfully over the previous year to expand its viewership by becoming included as an "extended basic service" on the major American cable television providers such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable.[url=][3][/url]Political pressure from the Northeast to make the game more widely viewable preceded the decision to simulcast the game on CBS and NBC. (NBC was the primary broadcast network for Sunday night games, while CBS normally held the rights to air games in which the road team belongs to the AFC.) The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairperson, Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and ranking minority member, Republican[url=][4][/url] Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, sent a letter to the NFL threatening to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption under U.S. law.[url=][5][/url] Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had pressured the league and cable companies to settle their dispute so "no die-hard Pats fans will be shut out from watching their team take aim at football history."[url=][6][/url]In the end, 15.7 million viewers watched the game on CBS, 13.2 million on NBC, 4.5 million on the NFL Network, and 1.2 million on the aforementioned local stations in New York, Boston, and Manchester.[url=][7][/url] The game was the most watched program on television since the 2007 Academy Awards[url=][8][/url] and the most watched regular season NFL game in more than 12 years.[url=][8] It marked the first time that an NFL game was simulcasted on two or more networks on a national level since Super Bowl I, which aired on CBS and NBC, the respective homes of the NFL and the American Football League at the time.
Last edited by Hansa (January 25, 2022 3:37 pm)
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
torontostan wrote:
I have noticed that for some matches during the Australian Open TSN has had two different broadcasts of the same match. One channel will have the ESPN coverage and another channel has mostly the same camera work but different commentary. They have done this for some golf tournaments before. TSN 1 could have the CBS coverage of the Masters and TSN 4 has the feed from another network or a golf channel, with totally different camera shots and commentary. I don't mind this at all.
ESPN primarily airs a cross court feed for early rounds which jumps to whichever match they think American's want to watch. This feed has US based commentary & hosts. TSN offers that feed, as well as the host broadcaster feed from Australia. It would be like airing the Olympic Primetime show on one feed (CBC) as well as individual events on their own channels (TSN & Sportsnet) - sometimes they overlap and show the same thing. TSN also has additional feeds they activate for F1 and tennis Grand Slam events.
Thanks torontostan. I noticed last night when TSN had the Denis Shapovalov/Nadal match on two channels but different commentary. On one channel they play the whole thing and on the other may bounce around a bit to other matches or show parts of two different competitions at the same time with a split screen.
- Tomas Barlow
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
the NFL's endless season comes to a stop.
It's 23 weeks including playoffs. By my count baseball is 30 and the NHL is 39.
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
the NFL's endless season comes to a stop.
It's 23 weeks including playoffs. By my count baseball is 30 and the NHL is 39.
Perhaps seemingly endless season would have been more accurate.
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the NFL's endless season comes to a stop.
It's 23 weeks including playoffs. By my count baseball is 30 and the NHL is 39.
True, but neither of those interferes with U.S. primetime programming every single Sunday of the season by inevitably running long. And that's what makes it seem so endless.
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Thread Starter- Norman peters
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
The amount of hype the NFL gets year round makes their season seem like it's a never ending event, in my opinion 
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- Johnny B
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There is no debate...football (high school, college, pro) is religion in the USA...nothing touches it in terms of steady and huge regular viewership and the networks and ad buyers simply ask the NFL how much and they simply pay it....the USFL's mistake in the past was thinking it could compete with the NFL...it couldn't then nor can it now....it will be interesting to watch as the 8 teams play from April to June in one stadium in Alabama....doesn't sound like a recipe for success but if it catches on and expands I'd be very worried if I was a part of the CFL...many players and coaches of American origin particularly would lrather work and play down there if the money is even on par with CFL salaries...
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
To put this into perspective, the new NFL television deal between NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC/ESPN and Amazon is worth $110B over 11 years beginning in 2023. The current NBA deal with ESPN and TNT runs from 2016-2025 is worth about $2.7B.
- torontostan
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
To put this into perspective, the new NFL television deal between NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC/ESPN and Amazon is worth $110B over 11 years beginning in 2023. The current NBA deal with ESPN and TNT runs from 2016-2025 is worth about $2.7B.
That's a bit misleading. NBA is $2.7b per year, NFL is $10b per year. Plus NBA teams negotiate their local packages, whereas the NFL does not have local broadcasts in the regular season. The NFL is definitely more valuable, but not 2.7 vs 110.
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Re: What An Utter Waste Of Airtime This Will Be Come April
This now infamous sports simulcast - the first since the Super Bowl in 1967 - happens this weekends on NBC and Fox. I don't quite understand the point of showing the exact same game and coverage on two networks, but at least it's on a Saturday, when not much else is on.
There's little doubt there will be some revolutionary techniques used in the production of this game, from helmet cams to mics on the players. Whether anyone will be watching either network is another question.
USFL Kickoff: Fox Sports, NBC Sports Aim To Revolutionize Football Coverage With Specialty Cameras, 32 Miked Players
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