Six years in, it’s time to evolve
Last Thursday, Tabitha Peterson’s plucky squad nearly upset Rachel Homan’s team in the A qualifier final of the Masters, giving up a steal in the eighth to lose 7-5. The game was in Oakville, Ontario and was televised live on Sportsnet in Canada and streamed internationally.
About eight hours later, NBC Sports showed Curling Night In America, taped in California two months ago.
Their feature matchup? Team Peterson, this time against Denmark’s Team Dupont. “How could she be in Canada and California on the same day?” wonders someone who has never seen a television before.
It’s just so anachronous and weird.
Six years ago I wrote about Curling Night In America, then a new show, in this publication’s print and digital editions. I was hopeful the product would evolve.
Perhaps some day the ultimate goal will be curling events covered in the same vein of golf tournaments, with live weekend coverage that includes cutaways to more interesting games and highlights of all the cool shots.
But it hasn’t. They’ve kept the same formula. One possible reason is the advertising placement. Rather than overlook the lead stones, they’re sticking commercials in the middle of an end (after, say, the second’s first throw), then come out of the break like no time has passed. It’s an advertiser’s dream. It’s almost as good as “thinking time per end.” But that’s another topic for another post.
While CNiA hasn’t changed much (other than finally getting Canadian teams involved), what has changed is the streaming landscape of the sport. Between TESN, World Curling TV, Curling Stadium, and this oddly mysterious Curling.com, watching cashspiels is bordering on ubiquitous. A made-for-TV international tournament still isn’t for the diehard curling fan, it’s for the dilettante admirers at sports bars or insomniacs flipping through channels, if flipping through channels is still a thing people do.
It’s just in its own world. Each team is representing their country, even though this isn’t a sanctioned international event. Most representation matches up with reality, with the exception of Canada (I’m sure Team Tardi would love to be Team Canada, and could in the future. We’ll see how they do in Pre-Trials this week.) But the CNiA Cinematic Universe ends on November 12 when they will air Peterson versus Canada’s Team Kaitlyn Lawes (another team that sort of doesn’t exist) at 10:30 p.m. The next morning the real Team Peterson will begin Olympic Trials in Omaha.
The facsimile can only go so far. Everyone else up north, in Europe and in the Pacific-Asia region gets live games.
Give us the live games, NBC. Trust us. We like them. So will everyone.