A month ago, NBC blacked out a semifinal match featuring Roger Federer, to show a taped match between Fernando Gonzalez and Robin Soderling. Well today they've done the same thing by replaying Federer's straight set dismantling of Ivo Karlovic, while Andy Roddick battles former world number one, Lleyton Hewitt. Via Fang's Bites....

NBC is currently showing the Roger Federer-Ivo Karlovic match which finished before 10 a.m. ESPN2 was not allowed to show this match. And it joined the Tommy Haas-Novak Djokovic match in progress, but not after showing the Williams sisters in doubles and James Blake in a doubles match as well.

This was quite maddening to tennis fans who wanted to see the Federer match which he won easily in three sets, 6-3, 7-5 and 7-6 (7-3). Yes, I'm spoiling the results because this is what NBC deserves for short changing fans once again. And not only is NBC showing it on tape delay at 10 a.m. in the East, it's going to do it at 10 a.m. in all time zones so by the time the West Coast sees the match, it will have been more than three hours old.

And while NBC is preventing ESPN2 from showing certain matches as it calls exclusivity not only today, but for the rest of the week, it is streaming matches from Centre Court and Court No. 1 live on NBCSports.com. So while the network is screwing with viewers on TV, it's saying, "Come over to our website and watch the match on a small player." It's not the same as watching it live on your TV whether it be in sparkling clear high definition or in old school standard def.

Providing the feed is certainly helpful, but to take fans of Roddick on a ride like this is just wrong. Not a single person in America can watch the match on television. You'd like NBC to think of the fans when things like this happen, but this happens in every major tournament the air. They won't be changing the practice anytime soon, so it's best to just get used to it.

Update: It appears the online feature is a bit of a pain as well. Via The Business Insider....

On the NBC Sports site, we clicked the nice big WIMBLEDON LIVE! link. And we got a big popup saying we needed to upgrade Silverlight.

We pushed the buttons we were supposed to, and we downloaded some things, and we refreshed our browser like we were supposed to, and then we pushed the button again like we were supposed to. And we got another big popup saying we needed to upgrade Silverlight.

[Repeat until you want to shoot yourself].

So now we're back to watching the ancient-history Haas-Djokovic tape delay, praying that the Roddick Hewitt shootout will still be going on at 1PM ET when the TV rights revert back to ESPN. (It probably won't be. Roddick just took a 5-2 lead in the breaker and is already up a set).

NBC is Effing with Tennis Fans Again (Fangs Bites)