FIFA World Cup Switches to CBC/Radio-Canada

[JCL]

This was posted on the CBC Website....

The world's best soccer players are coming to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada through 2014.

CBC/Radio-Canada reached a comprehensive programming agreement with FIFA, soccer's global governing body, on Friday for Canadian broadcasting rights from 2007 to 2014. The deal features the 2010 and 2014 World Cup soccer tournaments. It also includes the 2007 men's under-20 World Cup in Canada, the 2007 women's World Cup in China and the 2011 women's World Cup.

CBC/Radio-Canada will act as host broadcaster in July for the men's under-20 tournament, which takes place in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Victoria and Burnaby, B.C.

The agreement includes rights for all CBC/Radio-Canada platforms, including its eight national radio and television networks, websites, regional stations and affiliates. CBC/Radio-Canada will be able to make FIFA games available for viewing on mobile phones and through video-on-demand.

Telelatino has also teamed with CBC/Radio Canada as a broadcasting partner under the agreement.

[Alan Bealby]

Interesting. I found the broadcasts of this years World Cup to be very good on the HD side. All games were shown live and, despite a few glitches, well presented. I thought the combination of Sportsnet and TSN worked quite well. I think CBC will have a tough time equaling this years presentation.

It doesn't mentioned future U-20 girls World Cups but I would assume that CBC would have rights to them as well.

I have been disappointed that Sportsnet has not been carrying many of the Canadian international friendlies and hope that the CBC carries at least as many friendlies as Sportsnet has.

[PFD]

Yeah, as a soccer fan, I'm a bit worried about this. Don't fix what ain't broke. The TSN, Sportsnet combo did an excellent job of carrying all the games live and repeats later in the day. Not sure if CBC can do that.

[Alan Bealby]

Maybe CBC will use Country Canada as a second channel like they did with curling. I don't see how CBC can send out two different channels in HD like we received this year from Sportsnet and TSN.

[Neild]

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Soccer/200...48707-sun.html

excerpt:

"CBC takes another kick at World Cup

By ROB BRODIE -- Ottawa Sun

CBC Sports is still very much alive and kicking.

The public broadcaster scored a stunning coup yesterday, securing the broadcast rights to the 2010 and 2014 soccer World Cups as part of an eight-year agreement with FIFA, the sport's world governing body."


This could be very bad news for soccer fans, especially those with HDTV.

HD sports fans have seen CBC's poor coverage of major sports events, from the Olympics to the Stanley Cup to this season's CFL season. CBC sports mangled coveraged of curling so badly that they were dropped by the sport and CBC earned the nickname "can't broadcast curling". Anyone that's watched recent Olympics knows that live broadcast of events is not the priority at CBC, and that more timely and comprehensive coverage is available elsewhere. As for HD coverage of hockey, CBC was content to use low definition in a lot of instances where lowly NBC was able to provide high definition. Flip between a CFL game on TSN and one on CBC, and the lesser picture quality and overall broadcast package on CBC is glaring.

And when it comes to HDTV, CBC's HD broadcasts are frequently plagued by low picture quality, video and sound disruptions, and low def substitution. Even when not disrupted, something in CBC's encoding keeps the moving picture quality of hockey and football noticably worse than that of US networks or Canadian rivals, TSN and Sportsnet.

What makes this especially bitter for soccer fans is that they will be deprived of the excellent coverage provided by TSN over the years and the TSN-Sportsnet consortium in the last World Cup. Viewers of that event will know every match was broadcast live and in notably high quality HD, with minimal disruption. Simultaneous games were shown live on different channels, and each match was rebroadcast numerous times across the two channels. CBC has given no reason for viewers to believe they will get live coverage of all games, good picture quality, coverage of simultaneous games, or the rich re-broadcast options either.

It's true - CBC has shown no evidence they can even come close to what TSN and Sportsnet have done, so unless they can dramatically raise their capabilities, this likely bad news indeed for viewers of soccer in Canada.

[57]

Neild, did you see the last few installments of the Planet Earth series? The PQ and DD5.1 sound were as good as on ANY channel to date, so I don't think there are any encoding issues.

The first installment was WS, not HD for some reason and the first 15 minutes of the second installment were missing dialogue due to the DD5.1 encoding not properly picked up by CBC...

[Neild]

Originally Posted by 57

Neild, did you see the last few installments of the Planet Earth series? The PQ and DD5.1 sound were as good as on ANY channel to date, so I don't think there are any encoding issues.

No, but would sports broadcasts be a more relevant indicator?
- Olympics
- CFL football
- NHL hockey

When you compare CBC picture on each of these to the same event on a competing network, CBC's is always noticeably worse. So isn't it a reasonable assumption that CBC's soccer broadcasts will also suffer a worse end user picture quality than what's been on TSN/Sportsnet?

For reference what I'm comparing:
Olympics & NHL : NBC (and OLN's) picture better than CBC's
CFL: TSN picture dramatically better than CBC's

Perhaps the beautiful vistas of the Planet Earth program aren't an equivalent match for the fast movements of a sporting event, and it's in those moving pictures that the CBC broadcast really seems to fall apart.

[JCL]

Originally Posted by Neild

No, but would sports broadcasts be a more relevant indicator?
- Olympics
- CFL football
- NHL hockey

When you compare CBC picture on each of these to the same event on a competing network, CBC's is always noticeably worse.

What missing so far in this discussion is the state of HDTV as it will be in the year 2010? I'm hopeful even the CBC will have emerged from the stone-age by then.

[mrdeeds]

With losing the CFL and potentially Hockey, they might be dead or will have every resource to spend on the World Cup