NBC Takes Heat and Thursday Thoughts

As the dasy go by in Vancouver, NBC finds new ways to irritate the hockey faithful.

Initially, the major complaint was that hockey was moved off the primary NBC local channels to MSNBC, USA and CNBC. The expected silver lining was that the games would have priority there and be shown in their entirety.

That hasn't happened as several games have been "joined in progress", the worst of which was last night's prime time Sweden - Germany match which wasn't joined until the second period due to a curling over run. Tuesday's Canada-Norway game started on MSNBC and then moved to CNBC.

Another major complaint has been the games have not had the customary three TV commercial time outs per period that NHL games have. That has not deterred NBC from running 30 second spots in place of live action.

One of my primary complaints, that is more IOC related, is that the audio rights are so tightly held that there is no radio broadcast of the games on XM or anywhere else that is readily available. Also, it is idiotic that XM can't run highlights from the game and have resorted to using clips of regular NHL games as fill when giving the game story.

We will hear more about NBC and their poor coverage and more when we have Steve Lepore of Puck The Media as a guest on POTG Radio on Monday. Steve has announced that a new rant against NBC will be up at his site this morning. We will also have a guest from the fun newer web site, Intent To Blow.

From Pred Nation...

Our local five year old hero, Josh Sacco is the Predators correspondent in Vancouver. He was sent there courtesy of The Ellen Show and got to meet his hero Mike Eruzione. When we had Natalie Darwitz on POTG Radio a few weeks back we found that the women's team wanted to meet Josh and get the "speech" from him. We made an effort to make it happen but have yet to see any fruit. The women's team will be on The Ellen Show so maybe it will happen then.

There is more from the Tennessean on the the Sports Council's stated demands to the Predators regarding having David Freeman's IRS tax lien resolved by March 5th. Here is a copy of the actual letter. From what I understand, Freeman has paid what he feels that he owes and is waiting for a response from the IRS. I'm not sure what he can do to make them move faster, but we will see.

Mark Willoughby has more pictures from his recent road trip at The View from 111.

Amazingly WZTV gave more air time to Tuesday's public skate at the Sommet Center than they usually give the actual games.

AJ has more in his series of Calling it as I See It with an update on Jordin Tootoo.

Dirk The Forechecker has a handy chart of Olympic stats for the six Preds. What about Radulov? In His SWOT series, Dirk is asking for opinions on opportunities.

Next Tuesday, Zanies is hosting a night of hockey comedy with three great comedians, Terry Crisp, Stu Grimson, and Jim McKenzie. Sounds like a great evening.

The Coke commercial is on the table at What the Puck's commercial smackdown.

Olympic Notes...

Dirk at OnTheForecheck has the highlights of yesterday's Olympic action including Sweden's 2-0 win over Germany, Finland besting Belarus 5-1, and the Czech Republic beating Slovakia 3-1.

Today's games will feature the USA playing Norway at 2 p.m. CST (USA Network), Switzerland playing Canada 6:30 p.m. CST (CNBC) and Russia playing Slovakia 10:55 p.m. CST (CNBC).

Michelle Kenneth continues her Olympic coverage with a story on Patrik Elias.

More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass