Weekend Review

A couple of things from the weekend a few links on this wet Monday here on the East Coast. Remnants of the Tropical Storm soaked Rhode Island Sunday night into this morning and it played havoc on my DirecTV. For those of you who have either DirecTV or Dish Network, the one drawback is when there’s heavy cloud cover or heavy rains, the picture will go out at the most inopportune time. This happened last night while I was trying to watch the Yankees-Red Sox game so I really couldn’t watch it. So I won’t have a review of the ESPN telecast.

I can give you a review of French Open coverage on both the Tennis Channel and NBC, the Yankees-Red Sox game on Fox and the Stanley Cup Finals on NBC.

French Open – Tennis Channel/NBC
I give mad props to NBC for picking up the Patty Schnyder – Maria Sharapova match in progress instead of the silly ESPN2 practice of showing it entirely in progress. Now NBC may have been thinking of showing it on tape later, but they picked it up right off the bat. The Tennis Channel was showing it on one of its secondary channels live, but not on its main coverage because NBC had chosen it as one of its featured matches. However, the match was into the third set with Schnyder on the verge of upsetting Sharapova, but neither one could hold serve.

For most the first set, the Tennis Channel did not even have an announcer present so it was nice not to hear commentary and have the ambient sound from the mostly pro-Schnyder crowd. Because the match was on an outer court, the pictures came from the international feed, but that was sufficient. An announcer finally arrived at the end of the first set and he worked alone until 1 p.m. when NBC signed on. Right before the switch to NBC, viewers were informed that coverage was ending. My fear was that NBC would not pick up the match, but lo and behold, there was Ted Robinson, John McEnroe and Mary Carillo with the match. NBC did have good pictures especially during a controversial moment when someone in the crowd yelled while Sharapova was serving. Schnyder held up her hand to try to stop the point, but the umpire did not recognize it and Sharapova went on to eventually win the game. Had this been ESPN, I’m positive that the Alleged Worldwide Leader would have shown the match from the beginning and US viewers would have been shortchanged.

So the grade for Tennis Channel for not showing Schnyder-Sharapova on its main channel, F, but overall, its coverage to date has been good. Overall, it’s a B.

NBC gets an A for showing live tennis.

Yankees vs. Red Sox – Fox
Fox had Joe Buck and Tim McCarver on the call as usual. Buck and McCarver tend to talk about everything else, but the game. Having reporter Ken Rosenthal is a plus as he touched on what options the Yankees had as far as trades were concerned. The most frightening moment was when Mike Lowell was running to first and his leg hit Doug Mientkiewicz in the leg causing a scary whiplash. Fox had to show replays from three or four different angles, each scarier than the last. Thankfully, I didn’t have to listen to Buck or McCarver all too often as I was at a sports bar, but from what I did hear, it wasn’t very good. Pictures were good as usual.

Overall, Fox gets a C+.

Stanley Cup Finals, Game 3 – NBC
It was nice to see hockey on a network that had 100% distribution across the country. Mike Emrick and Ed Olcyzk were on top of things. The studio crew of Bill Clement, Brett Hull and Ray Ferraro did a very good job in picking up trends and going over the goal that went off Daniel Alfredsson’s skate. NBC lost Brett Hull for the first intermission as he went over to CBC to take part in Coach’s Corner with Ron MacLean and Don Cherry. Being able to watch Coach’s Corner online at CBC.ca, you can compare the intermissions and I have to give it to CBC. They handle the intermissions right with Coach’s Corner and Satellite Hotstove. NBC’s grade was B.

Now to the links.

USA Today’s Michael Hiestand says the networks of NBC Universal will have extensive coverage of the US Open golf tournament starting a week from Thursday. Expect to see coverage on the Sci-Fi Channel. I kid you not.

Newsday’s Neil Best says ESPN Classic will not show the 12 hours of Roger Clemens marathon originally planned for today. Clemens will not start against Chicago tonight as planned and will go Saturday instead.

From his Sunday column, Best correctly asks why is ESPN Classic called “Classic” when it hardly airs any classic sports programming.

New York Post’s Phil Mushnick gave a backhanded compliment to Cablevision CEO James Dolan for allowing ESPN/ABC NBA analyst Mark Jackson to leave MSG and eventually get to ESPN.

Tim Lemke of the Washington Times writes that ESPN has been taking advantage of its new contract with MLB which allows it to show the marquee teams like the Yankees and Red Sox more often and because of that, ratings for Sunday Night Baseball have gone up.

Joel Greenberg of the LA Times profiles Don Cherry who makes his US debut on NBC tonight.

Chris Zelkovich of the Toronto Star has some critical words for NBC’s coverage of Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

David Barron of the Houston Chronicle approves of HBO’s Barbaro documentary.

And for you Olympics fans, the London Olympic organizing committee has unveiled the logo for the 2012 Summer and Paralympic Games.

Those are the links for now.