Kramerica Industries

Well, as I said in another post on this page, I never really care to watch studio shows anyway, so if you're asking me personally, I don't particularly care. That NBC is super generic deserves a little credit just because ESPN had one non-pre or post-game studio show back in the day, on ESPN2, and that was pretty much it. That NBC has always done pre- and post-game shows with their coverage can either be seen as a sign of how little useful programming they really have otherwise, or how many times ESPN felt the need to jam SportsCenter editions down our throats. Or both, I suppose. Regardless, me dismissing the question with an "I don't care" response doesn't help the discussion. I dunno, John Tortorella will probably be out of a job in a few weeks. He did some work with HNIC for a time when he was between coaching jobs with the Lightning and Rangers many years ago. The players might not provide much in the way of personality, but Brian Burke was a hit when he was working for HNIC. Of course, you could get a Burkie or you could get a Milbury in the process of doing that (and I'm guessing most people these days think of Milbury more as a horrendous executive than him as a player or coach even). You're also fighting a more basic problem of that fewer people in America care about hockey than they do about basketball. You'll get enough basketball fans who will say "sure, I'd love to see what nonsense Chuck is up to tonight" to get justifiable ratings. Will you get that with hockey? If the answer is no - and the answer definitely isn't yes - then you aren't going to waste money, chasing some great studio commentary team, that isn't going to get the results you want it to get. I'd love a studio show that allowed for a little bit of focus on strategic breakdowns and allowing ex-players or coaches to explain certain things that happened and why they did, personally. I'd watch the hell out of a show like that. But that show will never be a ratings success, so to hope for something like that is just wasting time. Even NHL Network doesn't do that stuff; it's mostly just reruns of the previous nights games, reruns of On The Fly, simulcasts of RSN broadcasts, and (if you count the original, live On The Fly), three actual hours in total of live, original programming. And there's probably a really good reason for that.

Well, for starters, I would die of shock to see any ex-NHL'ers - or any current NHL'ers for that matter - talking on social matters in the way that the ex- and current NBA players do. Without trying to take this into a political realm, all I'll say is that it's not exactly a secret that the average NBA player, and the average NHL player, tends to see these things in different ways. I mean, sure, they'll tweet their support when it's the correct PR move, but look through some of these guys' Twitter likes and follows and a great majority of them don't practice what they retweet.

Chuck has spoken about his interest in hockey many times before. Him making cameos on any kind of Turner studio programming is, yes, predictable, but given that interest, I don't think it would be a bad idea. In theory, at least. Obviously if you oversaturate it then the appeal will likely be quickly lost. Otherwise, just because Turner has Inside the NBA doesn't mean there's any obligation to try and create a hockey version of it. Pre- and post-game shows in general aren't exactly the kind of programs that people tend to watch very much or very often. About the only time I've ever kept NBC or even local Lightning post-game shows on has been when there's either nothing else worth watching on television, or if it's the playoffs. And it's hardly a known secret that people don't watch Inside the NBA for much in terms of actual basketball analysis, either. It's the personalities that have sold that show, and that's always been the case. The day Chuck calls it quits is the day that shows loses a lot of it's caché. (And don't forget the flip side of this equation when it comes to Turner. This is the same company that, in more recent times, was responsible for probably the worst bit of studio-related programming I can remember when they had the Champions League rights. Between the studio, the manner in which they used their analysts, and other stuff related to that, it was a trainwreck. I have plenty of irritation with how CBS shunts games in favor of...some show involving Tiki Barber...but their studio programming is 10x more professional than what Turner and B/R were producing, and that's not even hyperbole.) We probably know how most of this ends up. A few of the current NBC commentators and studio crew will end up with ESPN, more of them at Turner, the rest settling with their current RSN agreements, and any kinds of pre- and post- shows, should there really be any - you know ESPN isn't going to bother with this - will probably be as generic then as NBC's are now. "Hockey player" and "personality" don't belong in the same sentence, and to insinuate that any of them have a personality would generate a green squiggly line underneath like the kind you get in Word when your sentence makes zero sense. A hockey Charles Barkley, or even a hockey Kenny Smith, don't exist, so don't waste your time trying to force one into existence.

Like everything Bally Sports is associated with, these graphics absolutely suck.

Considering the Cavs went to three straight Finals, including winning one of course in 2016, just what exactly was the rationale for redesigning the uniforms back in 2017-'18, anyway? I know it's not unprecedented in sports to sometimes change uniforms even when a team has just won a championship or two in them - sometimes it's because a redesign was already in the works and there wasn't much that could be done to reverse it at that point anyway - so I guess I need to assume that was the case with the Cavs? Otherwise, changing from the uniform you won a championship in 2016 with just 16 months later fails to make any sense on any level.

NHL 2Night might return but it would 100% be an ESPN+ only program. 25 games on television over the course of the season translates to roughly one game per week. Compare that against NBCSN usually having aired, I dunno, about five games per week in addition to a national game on NBC in the second half of the season? And obviously NBC might retain half the package, but it will remain to be seen whether they maintain a similar broadcast schedule. Hopefully they will.

I know ESPN has messed around with some of their other sports themes over the years. They better not dare to touch this timeless beauty.

Oops. Misread the map I looked at. Careless mistake, so thanks for setting me straight on that.

I've never had reason to look at Toledo on a map before, but, looking at it now, it's a border city to Canada*, so that's not a surprise at all. Obviously, it's not like transmission signals run into an invisible barrier at the border, so CBC and other Canadian networks finding their way onto US television in locations near the border, and vice versa as well for American networks in Canada, is one of those little perks to living near the border, if you're interested in what those networks have to show and if they have anything that otherwise doesn't air on US networks. EDIT: No, it's not. This little fact didn't go unacknowledged by one of hockey's most famous broadcasters:

Not for nothing, but a quick look over at /r/soccer will tell you that this not only isn't a uniquely American problem, but that some other countries have even more convoluted soccer distribution (in terms of number of services needed for number of different competitions) problems than the US has. Which, you know, most of us don't live in those countries so we don't know much about them and, more importantly, don't have to experience those problems, but as far as being annoyed by having the PL on NBC and Peacock, having the CL and EL on CBS, having Italy and Germany on ESPN+ (with the occasional Italian game on ESPN2 at 3:30am PT on Sundays), Spanish football on BeIn Sport...I guess the easy summary for that is that all of those are very expensive sports properties individually. It would be extremely difficult for any one media company to get all of those under their umbrella.

Are my eyes playing tricks with me or does it appear the clock on NBC's banner is slightly skewed to the right compared to normal? I might edit this post later for the sake of visuals, but I've noticed this with both games. And...it's annoying me.

To the surprise of nobody, I'm sure, NBC's NHL graphics package remains unchanged at the beginning of this season. For the most part, the graphics package in use since the beginning of 2015 remains for now.

On a related note, I noticed this on a couple of occasions last Saturday: What apparent need would there to have been to bring the orange helmets to Knoxville when the Gators were wearing blue helmets? If there was some kind of problem which would necessitate an in-game switch or something? I dunno, it just seemed unusual.

I'm not sure what's so different between this game and the Bills-Titans game which did get full national billing. Both of these games were originally early kickoff regional games.

As I said before, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt for the weekend with the original complaints, but it's pretty clear what's happening by this point. Marquee games/derbies are getting stashed on Peacock. NBCSN spent several years doing a good and dignified job in promoting the sport, and now they don't care nearly as much anymore. It's unfortunate. I know good streaming websites for some competitions and I have ESPN+ as well which covers some others, but with the Premier League, if it's on NOT on TV, then I guess I'll watch the games when they're uploaded on a different website altogether.

I can buy that as well, that the markets getting it as a freebie were originally going to get it on Sunday. We've gotten a bunch of Steelers games in the Tampa Bay area this season, and while some like the PIT/TEN and PIT/BAL games were obvious, getting PIT/JAX instead of TEN/BAL a couple weeks back (and staying with that 27-3 game all the way through, for some stupid reason) was just pointless and annoying. The local CBS game affiliate has actually been on a real bad run lately...that game, MIA/NYJ last week instead of TEN/IND, CIN/MIA this week instead of CLE/TEN...the Bucs have existed for 45 seasons. I hardly know any local Dolphins fans. Just give us the best game you can. Jeez.

Not going to lie - while a glossy finish would still be better than matte with the helmets, I really like the way these Florida uniforms look in action.

I'm mildly amused that, last week on the Gators subreddit, I did an impromptu ranking of the different combinations with the three jersey colors, and specifically didn't bother saying anything about blue helmets because, well, aside from a throwback game against Mizzou earlier this season, the Gators haven't worn blue helmets since the '60s. And then, less than a week later, here we are, the Florida Gators football team, now with blue helmets. On one hand, they really don't need blue helmets. On the other hand, in those rankings, the combinations involving blue pants always rated poorly because they either created the monochrome blue look which I don't care for at all, or they didn't go together with the orange helmet and white jersey of the away uniform. I also don't like the way blue pants would look with the orange jersey, for that matter (should always wear white pants with the orange jersey; orange or white helmet doesn't really matter, they both work). Whatever the jersey color was, blue pants always came in at the bottom. Now, the blue pants have something they can work in conjunction with for away games. When I see it from that lens, I can get behind this, especially for the Tennessee game. If the Gators are smart with their uniform combinations for away games, @ Kentucky should always be orange helmets and pants, and @ Tennessee should be blue helmets and pants. I'm ok with that. Unfortunately, the Gators have liked wearing those mismatched combinations of either orange/blue/white or orange/white/blue (H-J-P) over the years, and it's not that mismatched looks can't work, but they aren't something I tend to care much for. If they now have blue helmets, then those should be the helmets of choice for every away game that they use blue pants in. Mind you, I would still prefer either the orange or white pants, in that order, for road games, but how often they choose to wear whichever pant color is up to them.

Yeah, I know what I said a few weeks ago and I was really trying to be fair to NBC about it, but this is pretty blatant at this point. The only games that were ever relegated to NBC Gold before were the lesser games that were being played simultaneous to more relevant games. The 10am ET games, the occasional 2nd 9am Sunday game, ones like that. And games that generally didn't involve the Big Six or other teams around that periphery (Everton, Leicester, Wolves, etc.). The idea of a Man Utd-Arsenal game not airing on NBC or NBCSN at any point in the previous seven seasons was unthinkable. So while this still isn't as bad as what ESPN is doing with Serie A and the Bundesliga, this is a really unfortunate step back by NBC, and an active, willing step back at that.

Julie DiCaro, just to be clear, someone who has made more than one appearance in this thread for dumb reasons.

Kind of ado about nothing, really, but I'm just going to say that Ferencvaros is playing in the group stage of the Champions League for the first time in 25 years, and they're drawn into a group with Barcelona and Juventus at that...of course, with COVID, it's exceedingly unlikely attendance will be permitted to be all that large for either of their home games against those two European super clubs. The reason I mention this being my Father, who is from Budapest and grew up a Ferencvaros fan during the '60s, and is actually in Budapest again right now visiting some of his family over the next couple months or so. He says his brother is a big fan of the club as well, and I'm sure he would've (and maybe still will with the scraps that are there) tried anything to go to one of those games. Ferencvaros faced Inter in 1965 and faced both Real Madrid and Ajax in the group stage in 1995, but they haven't faced many high profile teams, and certainly no super club profile teams, since then. Just a bit of a bummer to think about, I guess. Hopefully they work their way through the labyrinth of the qualifying rounds again next year (that is, if they win the Hungarian league) but it's hard not to think they were beneficiaries of the one-legged system this year and would have a much harder time of it again trying to get through on two-legs next time, whenever that is. Because, even though they'll probably get absolutely smashed, facing top level European clubs in their stadium is something that just doesn't happen very often in Hungary and it's unfortunate that the year it actually happens, a proper atmosphere won't be possible for those games. The real win for those fans is just seeing those clubs in your stadium to begin with.

Did they? I could easily see Leipzig getting out of that group ahead of them.

I don't know if you're joking - I know you're Canadian so you don't get American networks - but, just in case you aren't, NBCSN now is what OLN used to be two names ago.

I just took a look at the TV listings for NBC and NBCSN for this weekend...I'll tell you what - if this ends up reoccurring beyond this weekend, I'll think you're onto something. As it is, this weekend is the final stages of the Tour de France and also the third and fourth rounds of the US Open. Things that, in normal years and normal circumstances, would never conflict with the Premier League. Fox ditched their US Open deal because they couldn't reconcile it with the NFL. So I understand the optics, and some of their MD1 shenanigans don't give them much benefit of the doubt, but this weekend looks like they have other properties that, I'm guessing, have higher priority/contract stipulations that force their hand. Why not just use USA Network? Good enough question and one I can't really answer. But I can see why their national network and sports network have their hands tied. For this weekend. I haven't looked any further ahead than that.

The biggest thing that annoys me with the new Fox bug is that there's too much wasted space. The bottom bar is the same width as the top half-bars that display the score, but all it has on it is the quarter, clock and, when counting down to :00, the play clock. 75% of the space on it is nothing. To say nothing of not enjoying the central location of it. The original ESPN MNF bug was the same thing and I didn't care for that either, but even then, at least that bug was more compact with its information. The fact that I liked the 2017-'19 banner only annoys me even more.