CBS Toys With SEC Fans

Friday, September 21, 2007

There's a ton of upside for just airing one conference's games for College Football, and especially if it's the best conference in the country at the moment (don't even give me that Pac-10 nonsense). Well there's also a ton of downfalls as well and one of those is becoming a big issue with SEC fans.

CBS has a pre-determined schedule but is allowed to have up until 12 days before a Saturday to change what matchup they'll be setting up shop at (which doesn't seem like a lot of time at all). The SEC also allows the network two times a year to have a 6 day cushion to say whether they are switching games for the weekend. This weekend is one of those times and Georgia fans who were planning on heading to the stadium at 3ish now have to wait until 7pm.

That's why Georgia fans like Walter Corish did not learn until Sunday night that Saturday's game at Alabama would start at 7:45 p.m. CBS took South Carolina-LSU at 3:30 p.m. and left the Bulldogs for prime time on ESPN.

"I don't like it a bit," the Savannah native and long-time Georgia season ticket holder said. "It's incredibly disruptive for a lot of people."

CBS, in fact, has exercised its second six-day option for next week because it wants to wait until Sunday before choosing between Auburn at Florida and Alabama vs. Florida State in Jacksonville.

"I understand that television pays a lot of money, but when this happens I just don't think college football is serving its customers well," Bruce Dixon of St. Simons said. "It's difficult making travel plans 12 days from the game. To get a hotel you really have to book almost a year in advance. And when they move the game to night you end up with a hotel room you might only use for one night, but you'll have to pay for two. It's just not fair."
I never said network programming and the industry was easy, but you can only piss off fans for so long. The article goes on to say that the whole decision really didn't even make sense. They waited until after the Alabama-Arkansas game and still chose South Carolina-LSU. Thus the Alabama-Georgia game is pushed to 7:45pm and ESPN on Sunday. It's a tough spot to be in, but you need to be smart about which two times you use the extra six days. Last week really made no sense.

SEC fans subject to whim of CBS (Atlanta Journal Constitution )

Posted by Awful Announcing- at 4:21 PM

3 Comments:

Sorry I dont understand the problem .The game is only shifting by 4 hours. Its not switching days and its not going from 1p to 8p like sunday football can. You're in the south, just tailgate for an extra hour or two..I just don't think its that big of a deal.

Rahul said...
Sep 21, 2007, 6:53:00 PM  

LSU fans (like myself) are even more furious with CBS. We practically beg CBS not to pick up our game if they can at all avoid it. We would only play night games if we could. We love the night atmosphere. We win more often at night. And LSU fans have more time to tailgate, eat, DRINK, and get crazy.

So last week CBS held the 6-day thing over our head. The way we understood it (like you, AA), was that if Bama won, they'd pick Bama and we'd get our night game. Well, Bama won, and they picked us anyway. So LSU fans are completely "WTF, CBS? If you were going to piss us off and pick us anyway, don't give us that glimmer of hope that we'll get our night game."

CBS has some explaining to do on that one.

Anonymous said...
Sep 22, 2007, 10:14:00 AM  

And the other reason LSU fans hate the decision. Because of the decision, Bama got Gameday this week. Because God knows ESPN wouldn't have gone there if the game was on CBS. So now we get to see ESPN fellate that lying sack of shit son of a bitch Nick $aban all morning. Give me a break.

Anonymous said...
Sep 22, 2007, 10:35:00 AM  

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