No Mainstream US Broadcast of US v Mexico
That’s right, if you’ve not heard yet, Steven Goff of the Washington Post announced yesterday a fairly confusing situation that ends up meaning the US vs Mexico CONCACAF qualifier on August 12, at Azteca Stadium will only be carried by a smaller Spanish channel called mun2 which is broadcast in English.
According to Goff, Telemundo has the U.S. rights to Mexican matches — not just the Spanish rights, but the English rights as well. While the main network will carry the game in Spanish, Telemundo senior vice president for sports Jorge Hidalgo told the Insider today that his company will keep the English rights and show the match on mun2, an eight-year-old cable outlet geared toward a younger Latino audience that regularly shows programming with audio in English.
He goes onto say that since 2000 Telemundo has owned the contract to show all Mexican matches in the US. This meant that ESPN would show the match because US Soccer had a relationship with Telemundo. However, recently US Soccer has instead been working with Univision, a rival of Telemundo, causing an impasse.
Goff goes onto say that he was told that ESPN did make an effort to acquire the English rights for the game but Telemundo sees the opportunity to make a profit with the interest in the game.
Of course the problem is most people in the US don’t have mun2 and will be shut out from watching the game unless they order the channel.
So blogger Jason Davis has created an online petition to make Telemundo and its parent company, NBC Universal aware of the need to move the USA-Mexico World Cup qualifier on August 12th to one of their more widely-available TV outlets.
Please go here and sign the petition.
For more information please go to Match Fit USA.
Comments are closed.
So will the game at least be on Telemundo en espanol?
Yes, but no mainstream English coverage. As Goff points out, the Telemundo pregame coverage will be about an hour where the mun2 will have a few minutes. Also, I want to be able to hear first hand in English what is happening during the game that I may not be aware of but the network announcers will.
I agree this does kind of suck. I can’t say that I ever listen to the announcers too much in any language though, so in that regard it’s not that big a deal to me to watch it with only Spanish commentary. As a side note, has an online petition really ever convinced anyone to do anything?
If the only coverage was on Univision we’d be okay because they have objective commentators and so many good camera angles and a great HD picture (even if you only have digital, Univision/Telefutura/Galavision (all owned by Univision) has the best picture on TV, English or Spanish) it would be alright. To quote a prominent MLS player on Twitter last week, “Telefutura makes FSC look like a home video.”
But Telmundo = Pro Mexico hackery of the worst sense. Despite being Argentine, Andreas Cantor thinks he’s Mexican when he calls these games and has been showing the worst kind of bias in the games I have watched versus El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica and Canada in the qualifying for 2010. Given Cantor’s love affair with Landon Donovan however, his subjectivity will be tested I suppose in this game. Personally, I’d like to avoid Telemundo if at all possible.
Thanks Kartik!
Lep, I sort of agree. I think online petitions usually doesn’t get the job done. I do recall one a number of years back that Steven Cohen ran on World Soccer Daily that did make a difference ,but most of the time, no.
Thanks for posting this Brian. We are busting our asses over this. Oh, and COYW!
So I checked last night, and wonder of wonders – I actually get mun2. Who knew?
I have Comcast Digital cable (in St Paul), but have not subscribed to any additional Spanish language package or anything like that, and the only Spanish language channel I get is Univision, as far as I know. I looked at the guide for the channels in that area (I think it was in the 500s but I don’t remember exactly) and was surprised to see that mun2 was even available. Then was more surprised that out of all the channels in that area, that’s the one that I somehow get.
They were playing music videos in case anyone was wondering – some in English and some in Spanish.
Good to know, thanks Steve! I’ll check it out tonight.
Comcast’s online channel guide lists mun2 as being channel 607, at least for me.
Didn’t Seattle’s MLS team end up being called the Sounders because of an online petition? OK, a vote technically, but still…
Yup, just checked it guys and I found it also on channel 607 on Comcast.