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This is just sad and unbelievable. What a time to showcase HD, the Olympics and a great rivalry. Talk about just plain flubbing the living crap out of a golden opportunity. There's lots of blame to go around on this. Of course the simplest thing would have been for Directv to offer MSNBC in HD. Way to go...

Brewer4 said:

This is just sad and unbelievable. What a time to showcase HD, the Olympics and a great rivalry. Talk about just plain flubbing the living crap out of a golden opportunity. There's lots of blame to go around on this. Of course the simplest thing would have been for Directv to offer MSNBC in HD. Way to go...

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Actually the blame should go to NBC themselves.
They should have had that game on "Live" on thier NATIONAL network available on a FREE channel. PERIOD.

Jimbo said:

Actually the blame should go to NBC themselves.
They should have had that game on "Live" on thier NATIONAL network available on a FREE channel. PERIOD.

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It was good the US-Canada game wasn't on NBC. Would be tape delayed on the west coast.

SFGuy said:

It was good the US-Canada game wasn't on NBC. Would be tape delayed on the west coast.

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Why would it be taped delayed when it wasn't on the other channel ?

elguevon said:

Damn right....but when DTV constantly preaches how they are the HD leader, blah blah blah, then they fail to carry an HD channel that every one of their major competitors has then THAT is the problem.

Furthermore, how long have they known that MSNBC would be carrying Olympic coverage and failed to get the HD feed, even if it was for 2 weeks?

Thank God for the 30+ PPV HD channels they offer though.

What a joke.........

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Again, not carrying the lowest rated cable news channel = not being the HD leader?

DodgerKing said:

Again, not carrying the lowest rated cable news channel = not being the HD leader?

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YES. When you fail to carry a channel in HD that will run Olympic programming that all your competitors have then you shouldn't call yourself an HD leader...why is that so hard to understand?

Don't wanna carry MSNBC HD fulltime?? Then at the minimum make some arrangement to carry the HD feed during the Olympics to appease your customers and not look like a bunch of greedy b*tches.

Its 2010...HD channels should be the norm, not the exception.

elguevon said:

YES. When you fail to carry a channel in HD that will run Olympic programming that all your competitors have then you shouldn't call yourself an HD leader...why is that so hard to understand?

Don't wanna carry MSNBC HD fulltime?? Then at the minimum make some arrangement to carry the HD feed during the Olympics to appease your customers and not look like a bunch of greedy b*tches.

Its 2010...HD channels should be the norm, not the exception.

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So the fact that they have NASCAR HD channels that nobody else has, NFL HD channels that nobody else has, MLB HD channels that nobody else has, MLB Channel in HD that many others don't have, means they cannot be called the HD leader (at least in sports)?

One channel does not mean one is or is not a leader in anything. Why is that so hard to understand?

DodgerKing said:

So the fact that they have NASCAR HD channels that nobody else has, NFL HD channels that nobody else has, MLB HD channels that nobody else has, MLB Channel in HD that many others don't have, means they cannot be called the HD leader (at least in sports)?

One channel does not mean one is or is not a leader in anything. Why is that so hard to understand?

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Particularly when the channel in question is NOT a Sports channel ...

I still fault NBC for this .

Jimbo said:

Particularly when the channel in question is NOT a Sports channel ...

I still fault NBC for this .

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Agreed. If Hockey is as big as everyone is saying, then they should have put it on NBC instead of MSNBC. They could have put it on live as well since they were broadcasting during the afternoon today anyway.

Jimbo said:

Why would it be taped delayed when it wasn't on the other channel ?

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Everything on NBC has been tape delayed on the west coast (and Mountain time zones) while the cable channels have one feed for all time zones. About 9:55 PM PT, NBC switched to the USA-Canada game that was seen 3 hours ago on MSNBC.

DodgerKing said:

Agreed. If Hockey is as big as everyone is saying, then they should have put it on NBC instead of MSNBC. They could have put it on live as well since they were broadcasting during the afternoon today anyway.

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NBC refuses to put live events for the west coast. The Russia-Czech Republic was taped on west coast.

DodgerKing said:

Agreed. If Hockey is as big as everyone is saying, then they should have put it on NBC instead of MSNBC. They could have put it on live as well since they were broadcasting during the afternoon today anyway.

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You are missing the point. Directv is dropping the ball big time without carrying MSNBC in HD. MSNBC has had the second most Olympic Coverage after NBC. If I subbed to Directv I would be furious, that the "Sports Leader" with all those "Full Time HD RSN" were so short sighted to blow covering the entire olympics in HD; and this along with their Vs. issues, is why I won't sub at Directv.

Islandguy43 said:

You are missing the point. Directv is dropping the ball big time without carrying MSNBC in HD. MSNBC has had the second most Olympic Coverage after NBC. If I subbed to Directv I would be furious, that the "Sports Leader" with all those "Full Time HD RSN" were so short sighted to blow covering the entire olympics in HD; and this along with their Vs. issues, is why I won't sub at Directv.

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I am not missing the point. You guys are making a bigger issue than really exists. "Big Time"? Please. Few people watch MSNBC, few people watched the Hockey on MSNBC, and even fewer people even have HD to begin with. The percentage of subs this affected is so minimal, that it is not that big of a deal.

I do agree that even though it is a small percent, Direct should have tried to do something to make this small percent happy for the very few events that they may be interested in watching on MSNBC

After all, there is a reason why NBC chose to put in on MSNBC vs NBC, and that reason is, more people, believe it or not, rather watch ice skating and skiing over Hockey during the Olympics (probably because the majority of Olympic viewers are not traditional sports fans).

If you subbed to DirecTV you would realize that they have all of those full time HD RSNs because they have sports packs that true sports fans want to watch, something much more enticing to niche subs than one low rated cable news network showing #2 rated Olympic events to mostly non sports fans 1 time every two years.

SFGuy said:

Everything on NBC has been tape delayed on the west coast (and Mountain time zones) while the cable channels have one feed for all time zones. About 9:55 PM PT, NBC switched to the USA-Canada game that was seen 3 hours ago on MSNBC.



NBC refuses to put live events for the west coast. The Russia-Czech Republic was taped on west coast.

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What ????? your not all blaming D* for it being on tape delay ???

The point that everyone is missing is that probably there was a reason why NBC Universal put the game on MSNBC instead of USA or CNBC.

The reason -- NBC was trying to use this as leverage to get DirecTV and other carriers to add the full-time HD feed of MSNBC. Not saying that I agree with this strategy (as I sure was upset to watch this game in SD on my 58" Plasma last night); just that it was a way that NBC tried to turn up the heat to get MSNBC carried in HD.

Of course, once D* weathers the storm of customer complaints about this occurring the next week or so, there is no motivation on D* part to add MSNBC HD quickly, as it's by far the lowest rated cable news network. Again, I don't agree w/this mentality, but this is coming across as a classic case of hardball on both sides in which consumers lose. And with the ever-escalating carriage demands by cable networks, I'm afraid we are going to see these carriage conflicts more and more in the future.

DodgerKing said:

After all, there is a reason why NBC chose to put in on MSNBC vs NBC, and that reason is, more people, believe it or not, rather watch ice skating and skiing over Hockey during the Olympics (probably because the majority of Olympic viewers are not traditional sports fans).

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Yep, no conspiracy theory here, it was strictly a business decision which probably does make sense for the avid hockey fan:

But Christopher McCloskey, an NBC Universal Sports and Olympics vice president, said one benefit of putting the hockey game on MSNBC is that it can run there without being cut up into segments to accommodate other sports as NBC customarily does in prime time to cover as much ground and as many viewer interests as possible.

"The incorporation of cable platforms into Olympic programming allows for the avid sport fan to watch games the way they are used to watching them — with long-form coverage," McCloskey said.

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Canada-U.S. men's Olympic hockey game headed for MSNBC - chicagotribune.com

George_T said:

The point that everyone is missing is that probably there was a reason why NBC Universal put the game on MSNBC instead of USA or CNBC.

The reason -- NBC was trying to use this as leverage to get DirecTV and other carriers to add the full-time HD feed of MSNBC. Not saying that I agree with this strategy (as I sure was upset to watch this game in SD on my 58" Plasma last night); just that it was a way that NBC tried to turn up the heat to get MSNBC carried in HD.

Of course, once D* weathers the storm of customer complaints about this occurring the next week or so, there is no motivation on D* part to add MSNBC HD quickly, as it's by far the lowest rated cable news network. Again, I don't agree w/this mentality, but this is coming across as a classic case of hardball on both sides in which consumers lose. And with the ever-escalating carriage demands by cable networks, I'm afraid we are going to see these carriage conflicts more and more in the future.

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Where do you have any documentation stating this ?

cosmo_kramer said:

Yep, no conspiracy theory here, it was strictly a business decision which probably does make sense for the avid hockey fan:



Canada-U.S. men's Olympic hockey game headed for MSNBC - chicagotribune.com

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But Christopher McCloskey, an NBC Universal Sports and Olympics vice president, said one benefit of putting the hockey game on MSNBC is that it can run there without being cut up into segments to accommodate other sports as NBC customarily does in prime time to cover as much ground and as many viewer interests as possible.

"The incorporation of cable platforms into Olympic programming allows for the avid sport fan to watch games the way they are used to watching them — with long-form coverage," McCloskey said.

Good point, chances are, had they put it on NBC, they probably would have been cutting away constantly making watching the game very difficult.

Jimbo said:

What ????? your not all blaming D* for it being on tape delay ???

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Not at all. That is all on NBC. We on the west coast want it live and NBC would tape delay it so it's better on MSNBC without HD. You living back east would get it live. Everything on NBC has been taped on the west coast.

SFGuy said:

Not at all. That is all on NBC. We on the west coast want it live and NBC would tape delay it so it's better on MSNBC without HD. You living back east would get it live. Everything on NBC has been taped on the west coast.

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Sorry, I was not saying YOU had a problem with it, just figured us as a whole would ... (tape delay)

Only a few more days and then this thread will slowly slide down the list and off the first page of threads.