NBC station in St. Louis doesn't show Breeders Cup

[stlouiskid]

Just when you think you have seen everything, another level in ignorance is achieved.
On Saturday at 7:00 PM, Channel 5 KSDK, the local NBC affiliate in St. Louis decided to preempt coverage of the Breeders Cup classic, and instead showed a station produced canned recap of the Cardinals season. Mostly with clips of players from spring training.
In a positive note for us lovers of horse racing, the shit pretty much hit the fan. The station received thousands of calls of complaint, and their facebook page was bombarded with insults of incompetence, many from people who were having Breeders Cup parties at their homes.
Today it has come out that the stations primary motivation was of course money. They could run lots of ads for local politicians, which they could not do on a national feed from the network. Why they could not wait an hour until after the Cup, I will leave the morons at the station to answer.
Apparently, the main network was not to happy with the station owners either, considering the money they pay for the rights no doubt.
This of course would never happen with any other major sporting event.

[ak1]

More to the point it was a special on speculating why the Cards didn't win the championship this year....I love the Cards but was beyond pissed about this. Thanks to HRTV which was streaming live online. Can't imagine if you were hosting a party!

I honestly did not think they could bump a national broadcast?!

[Lisann]

Yup, our local stations are out of St Louis. This pretty much sucked and I was aghast!

[Diane]

We missed the first bc race out here because of a college football game went into OT. If it was a superbowl playoff I might understand but a regular season college game pre-empting the start of BC coverage? Unbelievable. I had live streaming via hrtv but that woman commentator drives me crazy, she acts like she's on drugs and I'm constantly surprised when what comes out of her mouth sounds like an intelligent comment.

[griff]

could be their marketing department determined they would get more viewers by covering football. Damn Adam Smith!!

griff

[stlouiskid]

I would think actually Adam Smith would be spinning in his grave. They spend millions of dollars for the rights to show an event, and some outlets don't even air it. Doesn't sound like a brilliant business model to me.
Yet another great example that just because people attain positions of influence and perceived success, and earn a lot of money to do it, never assume they have a freaking clue they know what they are doing.

[griff]

maybe their marketing department determined they could get more viewers covering football. Sometimes mistakes are made but that does not mean you have to go down with the ship..

I suspect that decision was discussed, with full knowledge of what money had already been spent before a final decision was made.

And I believe that approach is w/i the bounds of supply and demand. If you screed up and bought apples that are not selling well maybe it's time to switch to peaches

griff

[Tappiano]

When I lived in Savannah (late 80's) I always had trouble seeing all of the broadcast because NBC did not make carrying it MANDATORY. If I was lucky they might pick up coverage after the early college football game was over, if not it was later. I used to call my grandmother who would put the phone up to the television so I could listen to it.

Unless NBC makes carrying the breeders cup mandatory no local station is under any obligation to carry it.

On a somewhat related note, the very first year the BC was held I was unable to watch it so I asked my mother to tape it for me and despite assurances she would be able to do so, I returned home a few weeks later only to discover she had forgotten to identify what channel to record so I wound up with 5 hours of college football...