Courtesy USA Today

(September 28, 2010) Saturday, NBC will have a whopping 10 hours of Ryder Cup coverage, which it understandably has hyped heavily since it includes golf's stars and lets viewers burst into a novel chant — "USA! USA!"— after tee shots.

So this is astonishing: None of that Saturday coverage, airing from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, will be live.

Nada!

Talk about screwing up suspense for a day where one side could settle the event's outcome before Sunday, when NBC returns to Earth and offers live final-day coverage.

An NBC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment, confirmed Saturday's Cup coverage would all be taped.

Saturday's tape-delay is meant to boost ratings — assuming too many viewers don't check results online or hear them in the news and then blow off NBC's replay — although a combination of live and taped action might have drawn a bigger total audience. And NBC has shown overseas Ryder Cup action on tape.

Paul Azinger, the 2008 U.S. Cup captain and an ESPN Cup analyst Friday, was surprised Monday to hear of NBC's tape-only Saturday.

"What? I didn't know that," Azinger said. "I don't even know how to comment. … This is the most-anticipated event in our sport."

NBC has shown lots of Olympic action on tape, because it tries to protect its huge Olympic rights fee costs by holding the most mediagenic action for prime time — no matter where or when it took place in real time.

But other notable overseas sports events — golf's British Open, World Cup games and tennis' French and Australian Opens and Wimbledon — usually follow a basic TV script. They air live — it is sports, after all — then re-air in some form in a convenient time slot.

That's how ESPN Friday will handle the start of golf's three-day Ryder Cup in Wales, with live coverage from 2:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, with ESPN then re-airing it in its entirety.

blog comments powered by Disqus