Open Letter to the World Curling Federation.

I have just sent the following message to the World Curling Federation:

I'm sure you have heard from many others, but let me lend my voice to the complaints from Canadian curling fans:

1. Why on earth did the WCF negotiate a broadcast contract that does not permit us to watch ANY curling on television during the remainder of the round-robin?

2. CBC is allegedly webstreaming the games involving the Canadian team, but they are not doing so for draw #4.

3. In other words, the largest curling fan base in the world has been completely frozen out of the 2008 World Curling Championships.

This is a pathetic disregard for the fans and cannot help but have a detrimental effect on the popularity of the game.

At this point, I am tempted to lobby that the WCF be disbanded; or at the very least, its directors be removed from office.

Webcasts from the Brier

Today through Thursday, I'm stuck in my day-job office and can't avail myself of the usual flex-time so I can watch the Brier in the comfort of home on our television set. So I'm catching bits of it via webcasts whenever I can over the internet.

The morning draws have been slightly dressed up versions of CurlTV transmitted (at no charge!) through CBC's website. The resolution is pretty poor, the technology is CurlTV, not CBC, and poor Luke is stuck in the booth by himself. In other words, the CBC webcast is not particularly good.

The afternoon webcast from TSN is worlds better. The resolution is much better, making it much more pleasant to watch the full screen version of the webcast. The technology is TSN technology, so we get better spiders (data runners around the action) and more camera angles. And we get more announcers. Russ Howard definitely is too quiet-spoken, and they still haven't adjusted the volume enough on his mike feed. All things considered, though, the TSN webcast is much, much better than the CurlTV/CBC webcast.

I understand why there's a difference. TSN cannot telecast all three draws without bringing in a second crew and/or paying exorbitantly for the labour to telecast the morning draws. So we're seeing the full afternoon and evening TSN telecasts as webcasts. At the same time, CBC isn't about to spend big bucks to webcast the morning draws (remember Country Canada???), so they have made this deal with CurlTV which is slowly improving but simply is not at the same budget level as TSN.