NBC Cancels Penguins Playoff Party

During last year's run to the Stanley Cup Final, the Pittsburgh Penguins found a way to get thousands of additional fans involved with the gameday experience by showing playoff games outside Mellon Arena on a large video screen, attracting a growing number of fans each and every night.

The Penguins are doing the same thing this year with one rather large exception: games shown on NBC are not allowed to be broadcast at the arena.

From Penguins.com:

The Penguins will not show Sunday's Game 3 of the Stanley Cup playoffs on the outdoor screen in front of Mellon Arena because of a decision by NBC Sports. Sunday's game will be televised nationally by NBC. As a policy, NBC Sports does not allow teams to show their broadcasts on arena screens. The Penguins will show Game 2 tonight on the outdoor screen, and will resume the screen for Game 4 Tuesday night. Both of those games will be broadcast locally by FSN Pittsburgh.

The Penguins, of course, aren't the only team to do this, as the Detroit Red Wings also showed Stanley Cup Final games on the Joe Louis Arena scoreboard.

The folks over at The Pens Blog were predictably outraged by the news -- especially since MSNBC recently published an article talking up the Penguins' outdoor viewing parties -- and decided to give NBC an example of the power of the online community.

Ray Carter, vice president and general manager of Pittsburgh's NBC affiliate, WPXI, issued the following statement:

"I know the outdoor screen has become a fan favorite for those who can't get into the game. I wish we, as the local affiliate, could grant permission to the Pens, but quite frankly, our hands are tied. We do not hold the rights to the game; the NBC network in New York does. I understand and respect NBC's right to do as they please with the broadcast signal."

We reached out to Brian Walker, senior director at NBC Sports, for comment, but he has yet to respond. We'll update this post when he does.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-17-2009 @ 9:33PM

Trogdor said...

Sounds like the same sort of nonsense that goes on every year around the Super Bowl, when news breaks about how some church or movie theater or school gets a cease and desist letter from the NFL or network. The reason usually given is that viewers at such events can't be counted for Nielsen ratings.

To which I say, it's long past time to develop better ratings and let the games be shown. It's absolutely stupid that in this day and age, there's supposedly no way to account for large public viewings. There's no reason the lazy ineptitude of Nielsen should be allowed to cause the cancellation of such cool events, but that's how it is, and it sucks.

4-18-2009 @ 10:10AM

kfogs1957 said...

The NBC Executive who made this decision should be looking for a new job. Isn't it NBC's hope that people reall actually watch the NHL on NBC and patronize their advetisers? Does it matter in 10,000 people wtch it on 5000 TV's not one TV? What a poor decision in so many6 ways.