Thursday, April 09, 2009

Did TSN Place an Embargo on CurlCast and Other Sites?

So here we are. Ms. Eclectic and I enjoying a pizza and watching the curling on TSN. I keep peeking ahead to see what happened in real time by looking at the scores and stats on CurlCast. Here's what I see:

Holy Cow, Scotland scored three in the eighth. And then Canada took only one in the ninth to trail without the hammer. And then Canada stole one to tie it up in 10th and go to an extra end. And then..... and then.....

Nothing.

CurlCast goes blank. So does Season of Champions. So does the Canadian Curling Association site.

We saw that the US stole four in the 10th to beat France and guarantee themselves a spot in the playoffs.
But what happened with Germany? They were in a close match. What happened with Switzerland? They, too, were in a close match.

But, nope. Suddenly at CurlCast it says "Data unavailable for this draw". Of course that is utter nonsense. The data are available. They're just not providing them.

I think this is what happened: TSN went to CurlCast and the other websites and said something like, "We have an exclusive contract to broadcast this tournament and you are broadcasting. You must cease and desist."

I'm pretty cheesed off. thanks for nothing, TSN!

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1 Comments:

At 4/10/2009 7:12 a.m., Blogger Alan Adamson said...

Sure hope you are wrong - sounds more to me like just what TSN said, some bizarre technical difficulties - I worked in that industry and we are a lot worse than people assume and than we should have been.
But if you are right, I am not sure our hopes for future live-blogging from major curling events is gonna be worth trying! (I mean from the site.)

 

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