RTC’s Olympic coverage limited
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, February 24, 2010
By David Vitrano
L’Observateur
LAPLACE – For some RTC customers, the Winter Olympics experience has been incomplete.
While the cable provider has shown NBC’s prime time coverage of the games, broadcasts carried on MSNBC and CNBC have been replaced with those stations’ regular programming.
According to Bill Ironside, RTC CEO, the company was forced to make a decision last year regarding the broadcasts. He said the company had the option to pay a fee, which he described as “a little egregious,” to carry the additional programming. He said Comcast owns the rights to the broadcasts and set the fees.
While he was not at liberty to discuss the actual price, Ironside did say for a small company such as RTC, the fee was significant.
He added that when the nature of the programming was described to him, he thought NBC would show most of the mainstream events.
It came as a bit of a surprise to him when the U.S. – Canada hockey match was not shown as part of the regular NBC broadcast, he said.
Something else that came as a surprise to him is the TV listings, which RTC gets from TV Guide. Although they were supposed to reflect RTC’s programming choice, they have not. They list Olympic programming rather than MSNBC’s and CNBC’s regular programming. That, he said, has exacerbated the problem.
Ironside said he had to make a judgment call regarding the interest of local viewers in lesser-known events.
“This is Louisiana. We are not exactly the winter sports capital of the world,” he said. “Unfortunately,” he added, “we have angered some of our customers.”
He said so far about a dozen people have called in to complain.
And while he said he is not sure the decision he made was not the right one, this situation will certainly color his outlook when a similar decision has to be made regarding the 2012 Summer Olympics.