There were three big sporting events scheduled for this weekend:
- The England vs. Sri Lanka Test Match
- The F. A. Cup Final between Liverpool and West Ham, and
- The F1 Spanish Grand Prix from Barcelona, with the Spanish World Champion Fernando Alonso (in front of his home crowd) taking on Michael Schumacher.
For the first, I knew there was no chance of getting any TV coverage. Unless you have the gear to pull in the right satellite feed, cricket in the US is a non-starter. Football? (Soccer to you Americans.) I watch the Fox Soccer Channel regularly, but I’d seen no announcement of local coverage of the Cup Final. Not until half an hour after the match had started (and after an email nudge from Chris) did I discover that it was available on cable pay-per-view for $25. Being a bit of a cheapskate, I decided not to pay up. Had I known how exciting it was going to be, I might have done differently.
Which left the Grand Prix. I watched the qualifying sessions on Speed TV yesterday, and was looking forward to seeing the race live on Sunday morning. I checked the schedule for the start time…. Nothing. Further searching showed that the race was being shown on CBS at noon.
[RANT ON]
Every year, most of the Grands Prix are shown live on Speed. However CBS Sports always buys the rights to a couple of the races and shows them tape-delayed. Obviously any tape-delayed sporting event presents a few problems: you have to be careful to avoid news and blog sources which might reveal the result. But with CBS it’s a lot worse. First, they clearly don’t understand motor sports, and the coverage and commentary really sucks. Second, the local CBS affiliate doesn’t treat it seriously, and supplements the regular commercial breaks with random newsflashes and even more commercials. The result is shambolic. I wound up playing Civilization 4 on my PC and looking up on the rare occasions that there was some Formula 1 action on the TV.
[RANT OFF]
Oh, well. Congratulations to Alonso for driving an almost perfect race, and to Steve Gerrard and Liverpool for their tenacious performance against the Hammers. As for England vs. Sri Lanka, despite brilliant work by Pietersen, Hoggard and Mahmood it looks as if it will all depend on the weather….