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04-06-15 10:42PM |
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Grat
Hitting Paint
Registered: Mar 2014
Location:
Posts: 107 |
A two hour replay of the men's final was on NBCSN this evening, and as far as I can tell from ^here^ all of the games that were geo-blocked on youtube were live on Universal Sports - I don't get that channel so can't confirm what was actually broadcast. I didn't look back at the women's, but I think with the time difference more of the TV coverage was tape delayed with just the streaming live.
And "cards they're dealt" could very well mean that, possibly a condition for remaining the NGB of curling in the US.
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04-07-15 08:40AM |
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CurlingGeek
Swing Artist
Registered: Apr 2011
Location:
Posts: 208 |
quote: Originally posted by Alice
How much longer will any broadcasters like Curling Geek or TESN be able to do what they do at "events leading to worlds or Olympics" without giving a cut to NBC or be blocked the moment NBC takes over an event?
That's an excellent question, and one that concerns me. I prefer to think of CurlingGeek as a news source, not a broadcaster. As a news source, I can legally state facts as they occur: "there is a red rock in the four foot". Similar to how any newspaper/website can report a score.
But, I Am Not A Lawyer, and if the NBC lawyers write me a nasty letter, I can't/won't fight them...my legal budget is about $0. Side note: I was blocked from covering one event due to 'exclusive rights' already this year, though it was not NBC.
This is why I try to provide my coverage via the host committee for the event, and also why, despite lots of helpful fans pushing me towards ads, I'm nervous about generating revenue from the site. While it remains volunteer/community driven, no one has yelled at me too loudly yet.
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04-07-15 09:35AM |
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AlanMacNeill
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Sep 2011
Location:
Posts: 1064 |
So I know a guy who works as a cameraman in TV news covering sports, and I had occasion to ask him about this kind of thing once...
They can't stop you from announcing the final score of the game. They can't stop you from showing/describing highlights.
They can, however, stop you from showing "detailed descriptions or accounts of the game", which would, likely, include the kind of shot by shot thing you do, CG.
The rule of thumb my friend has to follow is "30-45 seconds of highlights, if we're doing a live from the park during the game we can pipe the crowd noise and say the score, and *maybe* show one previous highlight, but that's about it".
Now, that's *major league* sports, which curling,well, isn't yet...but...your instincts are right....if NBC (or anyone else) tells you to go away, you pretty much will have to.
Would that be shortsighted as hell if they *did*? Oh HELL yes...but it would be within their *legal* rights.
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04-07-15 12:05PM |
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B Anderson
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 39 |
quote: Originally posted by AlanMacNeill
So I know a guy who works as a cameraman in TV news covering sports, and I had occasion to ask him about this kind of thing once...
They can't stop you from announcing the final score of the game. They can't stop you from showing/describing highlights.
They can, however, stop you from showing "detailed descriptions or accounts of the game", which would, likely, include the kind of shot by shot thing you do, CG.
The rule of thumb my friend has to follow is "30-45 seconds of highlights, if we're doing a live from the park during the game we can pipe the crowd noise and say the score, and *maybe* show one previous highlight, but that's about it".
Now, that's *major league* sports, which curling,well, isn't yet...but...your instincts are right....if NBC (or anyone else) tells you to go away, you pretty much will have to.
Would that be shortsighted as hell if they *did*? Oh HELL yes...but it would be within their *legal* rights.
I've seen this in action with golf live blogs. The websites running them are not allowed to post shot by shot updates of players (coughTigercough). They can describe one here and there, but they're not allowed to give a play by play.
-BA
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04-07-15 04:40PM |
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Alice
Swing Artist
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 324 |
Right now, none of us know these sorts of details from the USCA/USOC and USOC/NBC contract much less the WCF and IOC contracts. If we can't have play by play news from CZ, CG, TESN, and give some more flexible fundraising power to our athletes (like the now forbidden microsponsors of Team Gemmel) our USCA leadership needs a rethink.
It's rather ironic. USCA makes our athletes sign that long athlete contract which few members read, USCA signs the USOC contracts under the likely duress of losing its NGO status. And, Bingo!, before we know it, we fans and athletes are now just profit centers in golden handcuffs to NBC and USOC adhesion contracts. (For nonlawyers, adhesion means one side of a contract has all the power. Think fly stuck on flypaper.)
Best analogy to this story is Taylor Branch's 2011 article on the NCAA in "The Atlantic" magazine which triggerd many lawsuits from players still wending their way through law courts today. He has some pithy vocabulary about plantations for who gains and who loses in these new sporting business monopolies.
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04-07-15 08:28PM |
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Alice
Swing Artist
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 324 |
...and when I wrote "leadership needs a rethink" I'm not advocating setting up a new NGO. Instead, I hope our leaders would think like curling skips who work to win a long game for all on their team. Look at the new world game for what it really is: how to distribute the growing amount of money from broadcast and social media revenue which will only grow now that more than 1-3 countries dominate play.... especially when doubles comes to the South Korean Olympics in a couple of years. Social media: the "disrupter" feared to the death by TV broadcasters whose best revenue stream today is live sports controlled by multiyear contracts.
Our "leadership" is not just USCA staff and board, but also all the club and regional boards and USWCA, too. And, the professional players union, too, which will come in a decade or sooner when the majority of them stop living in fear of losing out on subjectively distributed doles from TV revenue. John Shuster and his team proved something about not living in fear in Halifax.
Funny, how IOC tried to give some power back to athletes when too many NGOs ran amock on TV money by requiring NGOs to have athletes as 20% of board membership. 20% ... good luck with that. That's like rigging a game by prepositioning 13 stones to start an end.
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04-07-15 10:36PM |
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jhcurl
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: US - CT
Posts: 1431 |
quote: Originally posted by Alice
...and when I wrote "leadership needs a rethink" I'm not advocating setting up a new NGO. Instead, I hope our leaders would think like curling skips who work to win a long game for all on their team. Look at the new world game for what it really is: how to distribute the growing amount of money from broadcast and social media revenue which will only grow now that more than 1-3 countries dominate play.... especially when doubles comes to the South Korean Olympics in a couple of years. Social media: the "disrupter" feared to the death by TV broadcasters whose best revenue stream today is live sports controlled by multiyear contracts.
Our "leadership" is not just USCA staff and board, but also all the club and regional boards and USWCA, too. And, the professional players union, too, which will come in a decade or sooner when the majority of them stop living in fear of losing out on subjectively distributed doles from TV revenue. John Shuster and his team proved something about not living in fear in Halifax.
Funny, how IOC tried to give some power back to athletes when too many NGOs ran amock on TV money by requiring NGOs to have athletes as 20% of board membership. 20% ... good luck with that. That's like rigging a game by prepositioning 13 stones to start an end.
Two corrections. It is NGB - National Governing Body. The 20% athletes representation was created by the Stevens Amateur Act of 1978, signed by President Carter.
__________________
JH
Go Phils, got my WS bet on you
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04-08-15 03:09AM |
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Alice
Swing Artist
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 324 |
Thanks, JH. And for "social media" I should have written "the Internet."
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04-08-15 11:33AM |
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RockDoc
Swing Artist
Registered: Apr 2005
Location:
Posts: 399 |
quote: Originally posted by dbsdbs
I have used Hola before but is not working for me now? Trying you tube via UK but no luck
Hola plug-in works fine for the geo-blocked games on World Curling TV. You may find it works better in Chrome than in Firefox. If you are on a corporate or hotel network you may discsover that VPN traffic is disabled for security. (Hola works through a virtual private network protocol.)
Cheers.
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04-08-15 11:50AM |
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RockDoc
Swing Artist
Registered: Apr 2005
Location:
Posts: 399 |
TV?
As the TV coverage issue gets debated and re-hashed, the irony may be that by the time this gets sorted TV is really not the important venue, but rather a streaming, time-shifting web presence. (Network TV is increasingly a dinosaur.) ESPN3 coverage here in the US is a case in point. The TV audience for an 8:30 AM or 1:30 PM draw is never going to be large, but the web stream and archive allows viewing at one's leisure. You can watch via computer or via polished app that will run on your phone or tablet, and can be casted to your TV via a video stick at the touch of a button. By focusing so intently on TV, we may miss the boat on alternate media channels that are more cost-effective to deliver. The current trend in home entertainment is away from TV and toward streaming services. Just sayin'...ESPN3, World Curling TV, and TESN are part of an emerging change in sports entertainment in general an curling in particular, just like Hulu and NetFlix, etc. have changed the face of traditional TV fare. Heck international cricket even got its own paid video streaming package and apparently has a large number of followers.
I don't know if the USCA has ever conducted serious strategic planning with their CEO and Board, but this is the kind of issue (and not the only one) that would come up in strategic planning discussions.
Cheers.
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04-08-15 12:33PM |
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Gerry
CZ Founder
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: London, Ontario
Posts: 4002 |
Re: TV?
quote: Originally posted by RockDoc
As the TV coverage issue gets debated and re-hashed, the irony may be that by the time this gets sorted TV is really not the important venue, but rather a streaming, time-shifting web presence. (Network TV is increasingly a dinosaur.) ESPN3 coverage here in the US is a case in point. The TV audience for an 8:30 AM or 1:30 PM draw is never going to be large, but the web stream and archive allows viewing at one's leisure. You can watch via computer or via polished app that will run on your phone or tablet, and can be casted to your TV via a video stick at the touch of a button. By focusing so intently on TV, we may miss the boat on alternate media channels that are more cost-effective to deliver. The current trend in home entertainment is away from TV and toward streaming services. Just sayin'...ESPN3, World Curling TV, and TESN are part of an emerging change in sports entertainment in general an curling in particular, just like Hulu and NetFlix, etc. have changed the face of traditional TV fare. Heck international cricket even got its own paid video streaming package and apparently has a large number of followers.
I don't know if the USCA has ever conducted serious strategic planning with their CEO and Board, but this is the kind of issue (and not the only one) that would come up in strategic planning discussions.
Cheers.
While Network TV Shows are being changed by Netflix and other streaming services, live sports is the one area of Television that is still very strong. As we see with all the major TV deals signed for Baseball, Football, etc and especially regional deals, the appetite for live sports is stronger than ever.
While people are fine to sit down and watch their shows at their own leisure, sports continues to be "PVR Proof" as a much lower percentage of people record and watch sports after it has happened. It's hard to avoid seeing the result on social media and people tend to schedule around live games.
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04-08-15 02:06PM |
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Grat
Hitting Paint
Registered: Mar 2014
Location:
Posts: 107 |
Re: TV?
quote: Originally posted by RockDoc
[B]By focusing so intently on TV, we may miss the boat on alternate media channels that are more cost-effective to deliver. The current trend in home entertainment is away from TV and toward streaming services. Just sayin'...ESPN3, World Curling TV, and TESN are part of an emerging change in sports entertainment in general an curling in particular, just like Hulu and NetFlix, etc. have changed the face of traditional TV fare. Heck international cricket even got its own paid video streaming package and apparently has a large number of followers.
TV is the here and now. The near future for marketing the sport to a wider audience over the Internet still involves partnering with the ESPNs and NBCs. Except for TESN all of the sport streaming you've mentioned is bankrolled for TV with Web streaming as secondary distribution either as an over the top offering or source for additional revenue.
Hundreds of thousands watched curling night in America, I think a few thousand tuned in to watch World Curling TV coverage of worlds. If the goal is growing the sport, especially in the non-traditional curling areas, then TV is where you need to focus your energies.
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04-08-15 02:23PM |
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RockDoc
Swing Artist
Registered: Apr 2005
Location:
Posts: 399 |
Re: Re: TV?
quote: Originally posted by Gerry
While Network TV Shows are being changed by Netflix and other streaming services, live sports is the one area of Television that is still very strong. As we see with all the major TV deals signed for Baseball, Football, etc and especially regional deals, the appetite for live sports is stronger than ever.
While people are fine to sit down and watch their shows at their own leisure, sports continues to be "PVR Proof" as a much lower percentage of people record and watch sports after it has happened. It's hard to avoid seeing the result on social media and people tend to schedule around live games.
Curling is currently not in a position to capture the kind of advertising dollars that make national sports like baseball and football so successful on TV. As a niche sport, curling needs to think more broadly than just broadcast TV to grow. There is tremendous potential in YouTube (e.g., World Curling TV) and wider distribution of TSN via ESPN3, and other live and archived web-based video. (CurlTV was a great idea, just ahead of its time with no sustainable business model.) I think it is great that Universal Sports has taken up the cudgel, but they don't archive games, and their web interface (compared to YouTube or WatchESPN) is terrible. Consider how MLB TV is a great add-on to televised baseball.
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04-08-15 02:37PM |
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ethan.b.meyers
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: May 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 18 |
quote: Originally posted by Alice
"Cards they're dealt....". OK, what are those cards? Did USCA, Inc. sign off on some adhesion contract with USOC, Inc. for TV/ broadcast money which in turn apparently gives NBC whatever it wants including the rights to stop all "amateur" broadcasts in the USA of worlds?
That's pretty much true. A few years ago my team and a few others used to stick an iPad up to the glass and webstream our games at Jr. Nationals so people back home could watch that. Starting a few Nationals ago, we were told we have to stop that; the USOC owns all webstreaming rights to those events (even Juniors), and nobody is allowed to broadcast anything from any Nationals. It's worth noting that when you go watch a webstream or an archived one it's through the USOC's teamusa.org website.
Of course there's also the issue that having 4 iPads streaming video on the club's wifi is going to cause bandwidth issues for the official stream, but the reason we were given was a legal one.
I don't know who owns which rights to each event. Obviously the USOC owns USCA events, and I'm assuming NBC and TESN purchase/are given those rights from them for those broadcasts, but I'm not sure. And world events will be different, obviously.
However, the biggest "card" is that the USCA can't just put curling on TV because they feel like it. They need a network. And the network has to want to carry it. That means having a profitable product--or rather, convincing NBC that curling is a profitable endeavor.
So the biggest reason that there isn't more curling on NBC is because NBC doesn't think people want to watch it. So the best course of action for getting more curling on TV is to prove to NBC that people do want to watch it, which is exactly what the USCA tried to do with Curling Night in America... and from what I've gathered it worked fairly well. Now NBC will analyze the numbers for the Olympics, Curling Night, Worlds, and whatever else they aired and determine for next season if there is enough interest to show more or improve the format.
Hopefully that will happen. Even if this season's numbers were great, it's still going to be a slow process. But we're on the right track.
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04-08-15 02:39PM |
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ethan.b.meyers
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: May 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 18 |
Re: Re: TV?
quote: Originally posted by Grat
Hundreds of thousands watched curling night in America
Do you have a source for that? Not that I don't believe you, I just haven't seen numbers yet and I'm curious.
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04-08-15 03:08PM |
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B Anderson
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Feb 2012
Location:
Posts: 39 |
Re: Re: Re: TV?
quote: Originally posted by ethan.b.meyers
Do you have a source for that? Not that I don't believe you, I just haven't seen numbers yet and I'm curious.
John Benton's Facebook post from March 23rd:
"One other piece of news from the trip. While I don't have any black and white numbers, I learned that the Curling Night in America show and any other curling shows have typically been the #1 or #2 show of the day on NBCSN and typically carry 200000 viewers or so. In comparison, a typical non-playoff college basketball game carries 60000 or so. This is great news and likely means that we'll have more coverage in the future and maybe more live and full length games!"
-BA
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04-09-15 06:25PM |
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MCC_PE
Hitting Paint
Registered: Mar 2009
Location: Cleveland, OH
Posts: 140 |
According to your links, 59k for US-JPN Women was for the 12 am broadcast on 2/13. The broadcast on 3/20 at 7 pm had 122k.
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04-09-15 07:08PM |
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rbi
Hitting Paint
Registered: May 2014
Location:
Posts: 143 |
Thanks Dean.
See below for extracted data showing only the top 7+ NBCSN shows on nights when NBCSN showed curling. I also included April 5 (when NBCSN broadcast the Mens Worlds Final).
NBCSN's curling broadcasts did not blow the doors off, but curling did well compared to other NBCSN content. The time slot matters, any content does better when given a good time slot.
Of course, NBCSN would love to have NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc., but for what they've got, curling does well for them.
Feb. 6
SKIING WORLD ALPLINE CHAMPIONSHIPS 9:30 PM 11:00 PM 110
LINDSAY VONN: THE CLIMB 8:30 PM 9:30 PM 99
NASCAR GRIDIRON CHALLENGE 7:30 PM 8:30 PM 76
CURLING MEN DRAW 2 NEW ZEALAND/USA 11:00 PM 1:00 AM 66
PREMIER LEAGUE DOWNLOAD 12:30 PM 12:55 PM 45
SKIING WORLD ALPLINE CHAMPIONSHIPS 12:55 PM 2:32 PM 45
NFL TURNING POINT 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 43
Feb. 13
DETROIT MUSCLE 3:30 PM 4:00 PM 78
SKIING WORLD ALPLINE CHAMPIONSHIPS 4:00 PM 5:34 PM 67
NASCAR AMERICA 6:00 PM 6:30 PM 65
TRUCK TECH 3:00 PM 3:30 PM 65
CURLING WOMEN DRAW 3 JAPAN/USA 12:00 AM 2:00 AM 59
SKIING WORLD ALPLINE CHAMPIONSHIPS 10:00 PM 12:00 AM 54
PRO FOOTBALL TALK 5:34 PM 6:00 PM 52
FISHING W ROLAND MARTIN 12:30 PM 1:00 PM 51
Feb. 20
CURLING WOMEN DRAW 3 JAPAN/USA 7:00 PM 9:00 PM 122
LUGE 9:00 PM 11:00 PM 113
NASCAR AMERICA 6:00 PM 7:00 PM 86
CURLING MEN DRAW 4 USA/CHINA 11:00 PM 1:00 AM 57
DAN PATRICK SHOW 9:00 AM 12:00 PM 55
POKER AFTER DARK 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 39
POKER AFTER DARK 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 34
Feb. 27
NASCAR AMERICA 07:00P-07:30P 100
MECUM AUTO AUCTIONS 06:30P-07:00P 94
CURLING 10:06P-12:06A 76
SPEED SKATING 01:00A-02:00A 63
FISHING W ROLAND MARTIN 12:30P-01:00P 61
USSA EVENTS 12:06A-01:00A 56
SCOTT MARTIN CHALLENGE 01:30P-02:00P 53
JIMMY HOUSTON OUTDOORS 01:00P-01:30P 45
COLLEGE HOCKEY L 07:30P-10:06P 43
April 5
PREMIER LEAGUE L MANCHESTER CITY/CRYSTAL PALACE 2:53 PM 5:01 PM 340
PREMIER LEAGUE GOAL ZONE 5:01 PM 5:30 PM 284
NASCAR AMERICA 5:30 PM 6:00 PM 155
CURLING MENS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 7:00 PM 9:00 PM 79
DAN PATRICK SHOW 9:00 AM 12:00 PM 65
PRO FOOTBALL TALK 6:00 PM 7:00 PM 63
PREMIER LEAGUE REVIEW 10:30 PM 11:30 52
MEN IN BLAZERS 10:00 PM 10:30 45
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