Some local viewers — not to mention a lot of national viewers — were decidedly unhappy with NBC on Monday morning. Hoping for live coverage of the delayed final round of The Players Championship golf tournament, what three-quarters of the continental United States got instead was a tape-delayed edition of Tiger Woods' latest victory.

Some of the comments the golf fans made to yours truly via voice and e-mail cannot be reprinted in a family newspaper.

The delayed final round aired live in the Eastern Time Zone only, from 10 a.m.-12:15 p.m. The telecast actually aired in that same time block in all time zones, on a one-hour delay Central; a two-hour delay Mountain; and a three-hour delay Pacific.

At the risk of damaging my reputation as an incurable curmudgeon, I'm not nearly as incensed about NBC's decision not to air the golf tournament live in all parts of the country. It wasn't the network's fault that the weather in Florida prevented the tournament from wrapping up on Sunday as scheduled.

But that doesn't mean there's not room for criticism for a decision that, at the very least, didn't serve the network's sports viewers in most of the country.

NBC, obviously, didn't want to take out its regularly scheduled broadcast of "The Today Show." For one thing, that's (at least marginally) a news show, and news is indeed important.

Perhaps more importantly to the network, "Today" is also a ratings behemoth in the mornings, and NBC was loath to displace a cash cow. (OK, perhaps the word "perhaps" doesn't belong in the previous sentence.)

But NBC did have other options. The network owns a couple of cable networks in addition to the broadcast network. And this wouldn't be the first time a broadcast network has switched sports coverage to one of its cable sister channels.

While it's true that both CNBC and MSNBC are news networks, it's also true that NBC has blown out part of its regular coverage before for a little event called the Olympics. And it plans to do so again, beginning with the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.

If NBC was really interested in making all of its viewers happy, it could have carried the end of TPC on either CNBC or MSNBC live, allowing its cable- or satellite service-subscribing viewers the option of watching the tournament's finale live.

(And, frankly, there is a difference between seeing something live and seeing it on tape — something both local and national programmers sometimes forget.)

Non-cable subscribers could still have seen the final round on tape-delay on their local broadcast stations.

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Now, those local stations would, no doubt, have complained that the broadcast network was undercutting its own audience by moving golf to cable. And, frankly, part of the reason NBC didn't do that probably had to do with the fact that the network itself owns a string of local broadcast stations.

But if NBC and its affiliated and owned stations were really looking out for the viewers and not just for themselves, a cable accommodation could have been made.

NATIONAL DECISION: At the same time, some local viewers are apparently blaming NBC affiliate KSL-Ch. 5 for the fact that they couldn't see the end of the golf tournament live. Which is a mistake on the viewers' part. This was an NBC decision, and local stations were not given any options.


E-mail: pierce@desnews.com

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