While in the decisions made game via NBC Sports Bay Area Comcast, watching our area’s simplest cable sports viewers channel do the bare minimum is still disappointing.
The community merits a credit score for excellence in live event coverage. But in different ways, NBC Sports Bay Area is truly following in the footsteps of ESPN, which goes opposite to what was promised years in the past.
Let’s go back to 2008, whilst then-President of Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, Ted Griggs, went on KNBR’s “The Razor and Mr. T” display and described the type of media growth ability that still felt possible back then, even with u. S Coping with a large recession and newspapers presenting buyouts to their employees to stay afloat.
The Bay Area had regional sports activities channels in the past (SportsChannel Pacific, Fox Sports Bay Area, and many others); however, this network would be specific. CSN Bay Area could offer the great nearby sports activities insurance the area has ever seen, thanks to Griggs’ vision and the financial backing of one of the biggest cable corporations in the world.
The cease product Griggs defined becomes sure to resonate with Bay Area lovers. CSNBA could function as a replacement for ESPN viewers who had grown bored with the Bristol, Connecticut group’s inherent “East Coast Bias.”
CSN Bay Area and CSN California have been energetic in the early levels. They hired insiders, produced authentic content, and blanketed a couple of championship campaigns. The Bay Area’s repute as a sports hub soared to heights rivaled only by New England. Comcast SportsNet seemed poised for exponential boom and media domination, necessarily acquiring all challengers and leaving antiquated media retailers in the dirt.
Yet, that’s now not what transpired.
ESPN’s loss of observe-through might also have brought about this malaise.
Soon after CSN released stations in the Bay Area and elsewhere, nearby websites started shooting up throughout ESPN.com. But after Disney didn’t see the return they were hoping for from websites like ESPN Los Angeles, ESPN New York, and ESPN Boston, plans for a Bay Area-centric ESPN hub and others were shelved.
CSN misplaced a potential competitor inside the system.
Covering each unmarried issue clearly charges too much, whilst stockholders should be glad at every turn, a corporate fact that ultimately satisfied ESPN to invest their TV resources towards the absurdly costly (the rights to broadcast live professional and university carrying occasions) and the surprisingly cheap (sports talk radio on TV). That’s part of what led to a recent purge of about a hundred high-profile ESPN personalities, which includes local standouts together with Warriors beat author Ethan Sherwood Strauss and SportsCenter anchor Jaymee Sire.
NBC Sports Bay Area hasn’t killed a prime layoff, but it’s hard to ascertain whether it’s expanding both. It’s a community that could thrive independently, but like ESPN, should follow the directives of a discerning organization. The result has been a diffused, ESPN-like consolidation process in recent months.
The feeling of unease has become palpable in the downtown San Francisco studio, closing in Autumn, after Griggs’ customary a promotion and relocation to Stamford, Conn. Tenured hosts and anchors with formerly stable roles started out bouncing around among shows. Henry Wofford, reporter and anchor at CSN since 2010, left the station. Based on systematic changes made by way of other CSN stations throughout the country, the writing is on the wall for two of the stations’ basis shows.
By April, the rebranding was complete.
Gone changed into the station’s antique name, in conjunction with complete-period episodes of SportsNet Central,
A localized version of SportsCenter. NBC additionally pulled the plug on SportsTalk Live, a livelier version of The Sports Reporters (which, perhaps not coincidentally, ESPN aired for the final time on May 7).
NBC Sports Bay Area’s lineup is hard to distinguish from the programming supplied on sports talk radio; there’s less of it.
Some pregame and postgame suggest — which generally encompass one or hosts lobbying questions from former athletes and coaches — had been prolonged by 30 minutes.
Almost as a replacement for “SportsTalk Live,” NBC Sports Bay Area introduced a brand new dialogue display known as “The Happy Hour,” which is essentially a radio display/podcast aired on TV.
One would possibly name it the “First Take” over of sports activities TV.
With rights fees exploding at an infinitely better price than widespread inflation, the intention has shifted from producing the high-quality sports coverage at any price to locating frugal approaches to spark dialogue throughout the time that ought to be filled between video games. And what’s cheaper and less difficult than asking a few current personnel to banter for an hour?
What’s funny is this supposedly newish TV version – to 4 human beings, generally guys with loud voices, hurling sports opinions at every other — has been around for many years, in a medium that TV supposedly zoomed beyond long ago.
Radio hasn’t killed the video superstar. But to be a celeb on sports television, you’d better be able to flash a few sports activities and speaking inclinations.
That should suggest playing certainly one of a few roles inside the world of sports punditry: the bombastic everyman at the stop of the bar, the routine pot-stirrer with an axe to grind in opposition to certain polarizing sports activities celebrities, or (greater hardly ever) the intellectual pontificator spouting $20 phrases and serving because the contrarian innovative foil to the previous two characters.
In the case of “The Happy Hour,” skilled radio hosts, Greg Papa (longtime play with the aid of play announcer who hosts the maximum famous show on ninety-five.7) and Ray Ratto (longtime columnist who served as Tom Tolbert’s unofficial co-host on KNBR for years), sit in the back of a cramped desk and communicate sports activities with anchor Kelli Johnson. That’s pretty awful a lot, aside from the presence of alcohol, which, in conjunction with the time slot, seems to be the purpose for the display’s name. It clearly didn’t come from the presence of Ratto, who used to jot down a column for CSN Bay Area’s internet site referred to as “The Miserabilist.”
There’s nothing incorrect with “The Happy Hour.” My unhappiness in NBC Sports Bay Area stems from there being nearly nothing else at the station apart from the sport proclaims and suggests designed to promote … the sport proclaims.
The death of the highlight display makes the experience. No one has the persistence to wait for whatever, consisting of clips of their favorite groups and players. Social media gives immediate gratification with a simple glance at of 1’s timeline.
But the path TV execs have chosen seems lazy, like a surrender of types. They’ve taken the maximum advanced and easily available technology in sports activities enjoyment — giant flat displays with clear, high-definition photographs — and determined their quality approach to winning the struggle for attention in the “2d display screen” age is to supply content that serves as heritage noise.
This is the 6th-biggest (and easily more than the sixth-wealthiest) media marketplace inside the USA. Are we absolutely persuaded that a full-time sports community can’t thrive?
Instead, NBC Sports Bay Area plays infomercials in the morning, accompanied by repeats of suggestions that serve as infomercials for groups just like the Giants, Warriors, and 49ers in the afternoon. Then it’s “The Happy Hour” at night and a recreation at night.
Where is the investigative journalism? Where are the authentic suggestions that focus on younger visitors?
Maybe the ones indicate an excessive amount to supply, so I’ll simplify my question. Where’s the content that takes chances?
None of this is supposed to be a shot at the individuals who work hard to supply NBC Bay Area’s modern-day slate of programming. When a plan comes down from corporate, a nearby station is successfully powerless to go rogue and exchange the game. But as a sports fan and patron, I study NBC Sports Bay Area sort of like the Golden State Warriors in the course of the Chris Cohan era. The ability for exponential growth is there, so long as probabilities are taken and investments are made. Unfortunately, it seems that when trying to conquer ESPN, they’re content with following their model.
Comcast – Why Rebranded?
Comcast, an American global telecommunication conglomerate, is in a transition phase. The transition is most probably historic and will become a milestone in the evolution of the corporation. Comcast is one of the nation’s largest broadcasting and cable television companies and has been serving the country for the last 40 years. As we all know very well, Comcast is actually Comcast Corporation with two primary businesses, namely Comcast Cable and NBC Universal.
Comcast cable provides various TV and internet access services to both residential and business customers. NBC Universal deals with news, sports, and cable networks.
