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Mudge
01-24-2010, 08:09 PM
Why is it that the NC State game seems to fall through the cracks to the RayCom Jefferson Pilot (or whatever they're calling it now) network every year, lately-- this regular season game has been largely unavailable outside the immediate Triangle area for (what seems like) the last several years-- it's bad enough that the national networks choose to pick up meaningless games like Penn, where Duke wins by 60-- at the apparent expense of any true national network broadcasting the NC State game for several years now. But the NC State game is almost always a good game (or should I say, a tough game for Duke)... what is the problem here?

Who is making these decisions? Is this matchup contractually bound over to Raycom, somehow preventing Fox, ESPN, or others from picking it up? It was listed as being carried by alternate ESPN network channels, but when I tried to tune those channels in on my satellite receiver, I got a message saying that the game was "blacked out in (my) area"... what is the reason for that? Is Raycom somehow trying to keep this thing a private little affair only for those living on Tobacco Road?

And while we're at it-- what is the logic of the non-round robin schedule, as far as having two games a year against certain teams? How is it that Duke never seems to get to play NC State twice a regular season, a close-by and long-time, staunch rival for over 50 years, but we get to play Boston College and Georgia Tech twice? Duke should be playing its three closest geographic (and traditional Big 4) rivals twice/year, every year, before anybody else in the league gets a second game. If Florida State and Clemson and Georgia Tech wanted more football teams in the league, let them play Miami and Boston College and Virginia Tech 2x/season, rather than Duke. I know that Duke can't play everybody 2x in a 16-game conference schedule, but the going in premise should have been that the Big 4 were going to play home-and-home every year, before any of the other 8 teams were scheduled for home-and-homes... and this doesn't even touch on the silliness of a schedule that has Duke play Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Boston College twice each before even playing Maryland or North Carolina once... this absurdity has now made its way into the football schedule, too, with Duke not playing its arch-rival in the regular-season ending game anymore.

To be clear: my 16-game Duke schedule would include 6 games against the other Big 4 schools, plus home-and-home with two more original ACC schools (Maryland and Virginia), leaving Clemson and the rest of their football-loving buddies to play Duke once/year.

tbyers11
01-24-2010, 09:00 PM
Why is it that the NC State game seems to fall through the cracks to the RayCom Jefferson Pilot (or whatever they're calling it now) network every year, lately-- this regular season game has been largely unavailable outside the immediate Triangle area for (what seems like) the last several years-- it's bad enough that the national networks choose to pick up meaningless games like Penn, where Duke wins by 60-- at the apparent expense of any true national network broadcasting the NC State game for several years now. But the NC State game is almost always a good game (or should I say, a tough game for Duke)... what is the problem here?

Who is making these decisions? Is this matchup contractually bound over to Raycom, somehow preventing Fox, ESPN, or others from picking it up? It was listed as being carried by alternate ESPN network channels, but when I tried to tune those channels in on my satellite receiver, I got a message saying that the game was "blacked out in (my) area"... what is the reason for that? Is Raycom somehow trying to keep this thing a private little affair only for those living on Tobacco Road?


I don't know the exact contractual details but Raycom does get to pick certain games on the schedule as theirs and they seem to pick ones involving Triangle teams, likely to get the highest ratings.

If the Duke-NC State game falls on a weeknight it seems to be on Raycom. The weeknight Duke-UNC game is always on Raycom, but there is such demand that ESPN always picks it up too. The weeknight UNC-NC State game (this Tuesday night) is also always on Raycom too.

Devilhawks
01-24-2010, 09:08 PM
Regarding your question about why we don't play home-and-home with State each year... Every team in the ACC was given two official "rival" schools when the league expanded to 12 teams. Our official rivals are UNC and Maryland, so we play each of them twice each year.

Perhaps we "should" get more "rivals" than other ACC teams, but of course any conference must treat all of its members fairly/equally. It sounds like your quarrel is with expansion in the first place, as a limited number of home-and-home matchups are a necessary result.

sagegrouse
01-24-2010, 09:25 PM
They are prone to do regional blackouts of games -- even in the western US. This is for no apparent reason except that they hope to hijack some revenue out of western locales.

WRT to Duke-State, the only reason it was available was that it was carried on DirecTV Full Court.

sagegrouse
'A foot of snow in 24 hours - finally!'

oldnavy
01-25-2010, 06:42 AM
They are prone to do regional blackouts of games -- even in the western US. This is for no apparent reason except that they hope to hijack some revenue out of western locales.

WRT to Duke-State, the only reason it was available was that it was carried on DirecTV Full Court.

sagegrouse
'A foot of snow in 24 hours - finally!'

And their production quality really stinks. I stopped watching the game against NCSU because they kept showing everything but the action on the court. I mean, Tommy Burleson was not that interesting 40 years ago when he played, and he hasn't gotten more interesting over the years!! I have written them on several occassions, but they continue to "improve" the game by cutting away from the action.

If this bothers you as much as it does me, let them know about it.

Kdogg
01-25-2010, 10:33 AM
Why is it that the NC State game seems to fall through the cracks to the RayCom Jefferson Pilot (or whatever they're calling it now) network every year, lately-- this regular season game has been largely unavailable outside the immediate Triangle area for (what seems like) the last several years....

I live in coastal South Carolina. My Raycom affiliate has shown every Duke game that's it's able to broadcast in my memory. Since it is a CW network (and WB before that) they don't mind preempting regular shows. If it were a CBS or Fox station they might go with the regular broadcast.

91_92_01_10_15
01-25-2010, 10:46 AM
Did anyone else notice that that the picture quality was very poor (for HD, at least) during the telecast of the Georgia Tech-FSU game yesterday?

I seemed so to me here in Wilmington, at least. Even my wife, who never notices such things, asked if we were on the HD channel.

94duke
01-25-2010, 12:08 PM
Did anyone else notice that that the picture quality was very poor (for HD, at least) during the telecast of the Georgia Tech-FSU game yesterday?

I seemed so to me here in Wilmington, at least. Even my wife, who never notices such things, asked if we were on the HD channel.

I noticed, and I notice this frequently with Raycom.

Raycom HD does not equal ESPN HD. The ESPN feeds are generally much better quality then the Raycom feeds. I'm not sure if it's all the Raycom feeds or just some of them. Maybe they have one set of cameras that is better than the other. I'm not sure. I do know that many of the Raycom HD broadcasts are pretty inferior to ESPN.

mapei
01-25-2010, 02:11 PM
Does anyone else feel that the "rivals" selection for determining conference play is somewhat arbitrary? It may have made sense to pick MD as our rival when the league expansion happened, because they were either in or just coming off a great run of top-5 and final four teams that had some epic battles with Duke. But that may be more the exception than the rule, and for the most part I don't think Duke fans think of MD as one of their closest rivals, certainly no more so than Wake or State.

alteran
01-25-2010, 04:30 PM
Did anyone else notice that that the picture quality was very poor (for HD, at least) during the telecast of the Georgia Tech-FSU game yesterday?

I seemed so to me here in Wilmington, at least. Even my wife, who never notices such things, asked if we were on the HD channel.

Yes, I noticed. It looked a lot like what I get on my big screen when I watch a standard def show that's letterboxed, and I expand it to fill the screen.

That was not HD. Not really. My guess is something went wrong at Raycom.

alteran
01-25-2010, 04:33 PM
Does anyone else feel that the "rivals" selection for determining conference play is somewhat arbitrary? It may have made sense to pick MD as our rival when the league expansion happened, because they were either in or just coming off a great run of top-5 and final four teams that had some epic battles with Duke. But that may be more the exception than the rule, and for the most part I don't think Duke fans think of MD as one of their closest rivals, certainly no more so than Wake or State.

The ACC calls these teams that we ALWAYS play twice our "natural rivals."

I am all-but-literally unable to refer to Maryland as our natural rival without rolling my eyes or using air quotes.

Newton_14
01-25-2010, 10:15 PM
And their production quality really stinks. I stopped watching the game against NCSU because they kept showing everything but the action on the court. I mean, Tommy Burleson was not that interesting 40 years ago when he played, and he hasn't gotten more interesting over the years!! I have written them on several occassions, but they continue to "improve" the game by cutting away from the action.

If this bothers you as much as it does me, let them know about it.

So this is too funny. I was watching the State game with my wife downstairs in the living room, which is very near my children's bedrooms, who are impossible to get to go to sleep in the first place. So there the stage is set.

So I am taking it all in and fuming inside at how we are playing, but not saying a word. It was quiet as a mouse in the house. Along with our play I was also getting very irritated with Raycom as we had already missed 3 or 4 plays due to showing the crowd or Sydney Lowe, or even worse, being late coming back from a commercial. On Mason's monster dunk, the camera caught him just as he was going into the air so I had no clue how the play had developed.

Well I was almost at my boiling point when they cut away from the action on the floor to show ol Tommy B fullscreen while giving us his BIO, and my fuse blew. I screamed SHOW THE FREAKING GAME!! loud enough to wake the neighbors let alone my 2 kids who came running out of their rooms...

Needless to say, Boozer entered the proverbial doghouse at that moment and was threatened with bodily harm if the 4 year old was not back asleep in 10 minutes...


So yes, I share your frustration on that. It drives me nuts and I am going to provide my feedback to Raycom as soon as I can.

Glad to know I was not the only one going crazy at the sight of Tommy B..