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dalek (15489)
The Rolex 24 is the premier sports car endurance race in North America, running for 24 hours at Daytona. It's the American equivalent of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The race is sanctioned by IMSA, which streams it commercial-free globally. The exception is in the United States, where IMSA TV is blocked because NBC has the rights to broadcast the race.
Segments of the race are broadcast over the air on NBC and on cable on USA. There are several hours of the race that aren't shown on NBC or USA. All 24 hours of the race are streamed to paid subscribers on Peacock. The NBC and USA coverage of the race includes ads. Most ad breaks are split screen, where the commercial is displayed in a larger box but the race is shown in a smaller box. This is standard for most motorsports coverage in the US, including NASCAR and Indycar.
Prior to this year's Rolex 24, IMSA and Indycar races were streamed on Peacock with no ads. When NBC and USA would go to commercial, the commentators were silent, but you'd see camera feeds showing action around the track. The other IMSA races at Daytona this January didn't have any ads when streamed on Peacock. For some reason, NBC decided that Peacock viewers should get ads during the Rolex 24 this year.
It gets worse. Unlike the NBC and USA broadcasts, the Peacock stream only has full screen ads, meaning that you don't get to follow the race during commercial breaks. Unlike the contextual ads that air on NBC and USA, these are full screen targeted ads.
To summarize, if you watch the Rolex 24 on NBC and USA, you can at least follow the race during commercial breaks. If you pay Peacock $9.99/month, they take your subscription money and give you a worse product in return. They are getting more money from Peacock subscribers through subscriptions and targeted ads, then providing an inferior product. This might well be peak greed from NBC.
There is a solution, of course. Get a VPN, set your location outside the US, and watch the IMSA TV stream. You won't get the NBC commentators, but IMSA TV is free, and there are no commercials. It's still good business for IMSA because international viewers still see the sponsorships on the cars and around the track, so the sponsors pay higher rates.
NBC has always been an acronym for Nothing But Commercials, but this is a staggering level of greed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @09:50PM (1 child)
Cell phone and internet service is a much bigger ripoff, their geoblocking of the signal is a much better example of real greed. I mean, it's a shame that they are even able to do so. We have to pry the internet open where nobody can block anything
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @11:15PM
Peak Greed? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 29, @02:44AM (1 child)
Nice to see some other racing fans here on SN!
Yeah, it's too bad the coverage in the US isn't better, but at least the Rolex is being covered. As well as many cameras around the track, there are also in-car cameras in many (all?) of the cars, that has to cost something to produce.
The broadcast/cable coverage is enough for me, I don't want to stay up for all 24 hours. It's about to restart at 10pm eastern time, for a couple of hours before my bedtime. Personally, I'm rooting for one of the LMP2 teams -- I went to high school with the mother of one of the drivers and am still friends with the family.
(Score: 2) by dalek on Thursday February 02, @02:10AM
I looked at the schedules for the Roar and the Rolex 24, and there's a lot of time reserved for just setting up the cameras and working on the equipment needed to produce the broadcasts. Between the technology and the people needed to operate it, I'm sure it's quite expensive to broadcast the Rolex 24 and all the other events during this part of Speedweeks. Then there are production staff, and a larger team of broadcasters than what's normally required for a race. I signed up for Peacock's ad-free tier and was happy to pay the $9.99/month if it meant getting an uninterrupted broadcast of all 24 hours. I might even be willing to pay a bit more than that, perhaps $15/month, with the other sports that are also on Peacock. It was just frustrating that the NBC (free, over the air) and USA (cable) broadcasts had side-by-side split screens during a lot of commercial breaks while Peacock users paying the $9.99/month got full screen ads during those times. It's just backwards when the people paying NBC directly get a worse product than those who watch over the air on cable. I have no problem with paying for the product I'm watching. NBC needs to cover their costs and they want broadcasting sports to be profitable. No problem with that. It's just frustrating when paying customers get a worse product than everyone else.
That said, I am glad that so much of the Rolex 24 is shown in the US. I think streaming is the only option in other countries. I am curious what you thought of the finish for the LMP2 cars. I don't have the same connection you do to any of the teams, but I did recognize some of the drivers like Esteban Gutierrez from other series. Overall, it was really good race, I thought. As much as I enjoy other races like the Daytona 500, Le Mans, and everything that happens the Sunday before Memorial Day, I think this is my favorite race all year.
I've watched quite a bit of F1 and NASCAR for quite a few years, but I'm still learning about endurance racing and want to follow it more this year. It seems like there was a new element of tire strategy in this year's race, a bit like some NASCAR races where tire allocations are quite limited. I'm curious what you thought of that, but I thought it was a good move by IMSA to make this change. I am looking forward to Sebring in a couple of months, and perhaps I'll watch all 12 hours of it.
And no, I didn't come anywhere close to staying up all 24 hours. :-)
I'll second what you said, that I'm also glad to see other people here are interested in motorsports. I'll probably post more journals about this once more series get started this year.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest just whinge about SN.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Sunday January 29, @09:05PM (2 children)
It's not just motor racing.
Broadcast/streaming of some winter sports where I am has been bou[Fly Pan Am for the All-American experience]ght by a commercial company, that uses split screen advertisements. When the com[Enron - energy you can trust.]mercials are playing, the sound is the commercial, not the com[F.W. Woolworth - everything you need]mentary. The timing of the commercials pays no attention to whether the action is at a cr[Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?]itical point or not. Blind and partially sighted listeners are up in arms, and there might be a discrimination case up with the regulator. I hope it wins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Sunday January 29, @10:29PM
Actually, to get the full experience of someone blind listening to the commentary, it would be more like this:
"Broadcast/streaming of some winter sports where I am has been bou[Fly Pan Am for the All-American experience]it screen advertisements. When the com[Enron - energy you can trust.]d is the commercial, not the com[F.W. Woolworth - everything you need]ls pays no attention to whether the action is at a cr[Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?]eners are up in arms, and there might be a discrimination case up with the regulator. I hope it wins."
(Score: 2) by dalek on Thursday February 02, @02:26AM
What you're describing sounds a lot like ESPN's broadcast of the F1 2018 Australian Grand Prix. Before that, NBC had the rights to F1, showing the world feed while having their own commentators generally broadcasting in a studio. When ESPN got the rights in the US, they made a deal to air the Sky broadcasts from the UK. Sky has a much larger budget than NBC did, so it's a better broadcast. The problem is that ESPN tried to insert commercials into a commercial-free broadcast, so we would get things like random commercials starting in the middle of a sentence from the commentators. ESPN was criticized so much for this that all F1 races since then have been commercial free. At this point, I'd find it quite jarring to go back to NBC's F1 broadcasts and their commercials, even though I really liked the NBC commentators.
As annoying as the split screen commercials can be, they're actually better than what Peacock subscribers got during the Rolex 24. If you watched on free over-the-air broadcasts for the parts of the race that were on NBC, you got split screen commercials. If you paid $9.99/month for a Peacock subscription, you got full screen ads. Although I'm not 100% certain, I think that's because the ads on Peacock were targeted for each subscriber instead of the contextual ads for the NBC and USA coverage. I have no problem paying for the coverage. I'm just frustrated that I signed up for $9.99/month, then got a worse product than if I hadn't subscribed.
At least for this race, I think it would be hard to sue IMSA and NBC over the split screen commercials. IMSA does provide the audio from Radio Le Mans for free, even in the US. It's not blacked out like IMSA TV, so they would probably say it's a good alternative. A lot of people on Reddit actually said they preferred the Radio Le Mans commentary to the NBC commentators. In the absence of the audio commentary being made available for free, it definitely would prevent blind people from following the race or any other event during the split screen commercials.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest just whinge about SN.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Monday January 30, @08:59PM
There is a such thing as "Peak Greed"? I thought, that Greed + Money == Business as Usual. Maybe I was mistaken, though. Maybe, new low reached by corporate News outlet? Hmm..., maybe not a new low, but you know what I'm saying.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, @04:37PM
Hey dalek,
I just posted to your previous journal:
> NASCAR crash test program overview (Score: 0)
> by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, @11:34AM (#1289662)
Turns out that the NASCAR crash test program for the current "next gen" car included a lot of simulation and correlation work. Nice, fairly technical, overview at this link, https://www.automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com/features/crash-testing-nascars-next-gen.html [automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com] [automotivetestingtechnologyinternational.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @11:06PM
don't follow cars, always assumed they would be the same if not better.
motogp.com does streaming of all sessions, and after the first practice i turn off the commentators, by that time they have said all they will say for the weekend. is a very corporate service (no 'off-cuff' news items, and not enough behind the scenes stuff). but. so far no classical ads anywhere to be seen.