Add The Pittsburgh Penguins To The List Of People Mad At NBC

GE, NBC, and MSNBC certainly have not been making any friends at all this year. Actually, that's putting it lightly seeing as they basically have been become a laughing stock of television. From Jeanine Garafalo's extremely idiotic statement last week on Countdown with Keith Olbermann which basically called over 40% of Americans racists (all those who were exercising their freedom of speech and protested Obama's tax policy) to the overload of liberal hosts (see addition of Ed Schultz) and rapidly declining ratings on MSNBC (damn, tvbythenumbers.com is down so I can't pull up the O'Reilly vs. Olbermann chart that illustrates this) to the loss of money they suffered broadcasting the Super Bowl to the occasionally laughable ratings of the NHL on NBC (although in defense of that, the NHL is currently seeing some relatively really strong ratings and the Pens-Flyers game on Sunday was the highest rated hockey game on NBC since the Winter Classic). But sticking on the subject of hockey, they slightly angered some Pens fans by not allowing Sunday's Pens-Flyers Game 3 to be shown on an outdoor screen. All year last year, they allowed games to be shown on gigantic outdoor screens in front of the Mellon Arena, which is why it came to such a shock to Penguins fans who may have taken this whole thing a bit too far. From Puck The Media (which is quickly becoming one of my new favorite blogs; check them out if you can and have not already).

The Pensblog have been waging a war against NBC since their decision to ruin the party outside Mellon Arena to watch the game. Now, we agree with them in principle. The 14 or 15 diehard Penguins fans and the 300 or so of their hangers-on since last year’s Cup run want somewhere to drink in public and watch the Penguins lose. But, they seriously took it to a new level. It was like the Parents TV Council after an episode of South Park.

It started with confusing outrage, and a list of people to contact. Then it went to reasoned pleading with the league, whom the guys and their homosexual friend felt abandoned by. Because as you know, the NHL is a business created to cater to the Pens fan, and no one else.

Finally (sort of), it exploded into an admittedly hilarious photoshop of a Penguin defecating on the NBC logo, and a list of NBC’s major advertisers. Really guys? Do you think Red Bull gives a crap moreso than NBC about hockey? Where is that getting you? It finally led to them recommending you watch on the web on one of CBC’s broadcasts.

It finished for now with Pensblog’s annoyingly narrow-founded recap of the game, where they made jokes about Pierre McGuire. Because that’s never been done before. Also made fun of: Harry Kalas. I’m done linking to these clowns, you can find that yourself.

That final post stated that “The war on NBC isn’t over”. C’mon guys, don’t you want people to think I came up with that headline myself? Lame.

But maybe the war needs to end after this news. A 33% share in Pittsburgh? 33%! So why did this happen? Maybe because most of the Penguin outdoor screen-watching fanbase went on with their lives after hearing this news, instead of wasting their time going all Rachel Dratch in 30 Rock about it? If the war isn’t over, then Round 1 most certainly goes to NBC.

Too funny! Like PTM, I agree with what the Pens fans are saying, but The Pensblog took this thing way too damn far.

However, while NBC came out the winners and unscathed in this battle, they really do need to lighten up. For the NBC Universal brand, this has been on of their worst weeks on record, as evidenced by everything linked to up top. In fact, the Garafalo statement was so bad that Bill O'Reilly actually aired bits and pieces of that segment of Countdown! And O'Reilly goes to great lengths not to say or give any direct mention to Countdown and Keith Olbermann (Olbermann's chime-ins were edited out by Fox News in the segment and the logo Countdown with Keith Olbermann was obsucred by a the bottom of a blue box and they only credited the clip as "MSNBC", and most hilariously of all in that Factor segment, the guests referred to him as "that on-air host"). Hopefully though, they'll be able to turn things around as no one wants to see an organization this bad in the dumps like this.

And now that I have pretty much thoroughly bashed NBC, I guess now is as good a time as any to announce that I will be "plausibly" live-blogging Countdown with Keith Olbermann over at JamesCraven's blog, The O Files, tonight at 10 PM ET, assuming that the Flyers game does not go into overtime, in which case, I'll do it from the Countdown website either later tonight or 11 AM ET Wednesday morning.