Some NBA games are starting at 11:00 p.m. ET. This is a new development coinciding with the league striking a new broadcast deal with NBC, which aired Tuesday night's Nuggets–Kings game on the Peacock streaming app. I'm an adaptable person who generally accepts change cheerfully, but trying to watch last night's game made me feel like several media executives were spitting directly into my face.
I know NBA games never start at the advertised time, but it was still annoying to turn on the broadcast a few minutes before 11:00 p.m. and see a big "Countdown To Tipoff" graphic on the screen with 20 minutes on it. That's fine. I can read a book for a little bit.
Of course, before I could think too hard about the countdown clock, I had to deal with the fact that about a quarter of the television screen was taken up by an advertisement for some interactive game called Peacock ScoreCard, which NBC Universal describes as "bingo meets fantasy sports" and seems like a great way to give kids gambling brain. I had to use the remote to highlight and select a "back to full screen" banner in order to get the advertisement for the stupid bingo game to go away.
Once the game actually started, the advertisement for the stupid bingo game came back, and I had to dismiss it again. A few minutes later, while the game was unfolding on my damn screen, a little pop-up ad placed itself directly over the home team's score. It was warning me that the stupid bingo game was about to launch, and there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. OK. Please stop showing me this.
The pop-up disappeared and was replaced by a slightly smaller pop-up, this one with a short countdown clock and a "cancel" button. I didn't get to the remote in time to hit the button, and the big quarter-screen ad for the stupid bingo game returned. This happened three more times before halftime.
It is not a good feeling to pay $10.99 per month for a streaming service, largely for the purpose of watching sports, and then be presented with persistent pop-up ads for some dumb bullcrap that not even a baby would find entertaining. I was trying to watch basketball, not play the streaming era's answer to one of those "spot the difference" bar games. All that was separating the Peacock broadcast I experienced last night from what you might find on an illegal streaming site was a live chat box full of European teens spamming "WESTBROOK GOAT" the whole game.
So my question for you, Michael J. Cavanagh, interim president of the Comcast Corporation, of which NBC Universal is a subsidiary, is: What do you think of me? Am I simply a little worm, dangling on your hook? Am I human being worthy of your respect, or some ape who is here to push buttons? Do you think that paying $132 a year in order to watch some basketball games should at the very least grant me a reprieve from spam filling up my screen, or are you some kind of sick puppy?
Please get in touch so that we can discuss this further.
