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I'd like to take a brief moment and completely rip NBC Sports.
I, like most geeks, get the vast majority of my news from the internet. This should come as no surprise...face it, you're reading this on the web as well.
I am an ESPN junkie. I check it 2-3 times a day...more if I'm bored. Hell, I read about sports I care absolutely nothing about. And, in spite of the fact that I think guys like Bill Simmons and Jim Caple are ridiculously biased fucktards with no ability to remain objective, I still enjoy reading most of the stuff on espn.com.
Here's the problem. During the Olympic Games (NOT Olympics, as NBC has improperly named their site...) ESPN links a chunk of their content to NBC's Olympic Games website. This probably has something to do with sponsorship. In any case, NBC has subcontracted with Doubleclick to host their site, and undoubtedly serve up a mess of advertising along the way.
This wouldn't inherently bug me...what bothers me is that the Doubleclick servers crash my browser about 75% of the time. They must be using some obnoxious mix of Java, javascript, cookies, flash, and who knows what else...and it completely locks up my browser when I hit their site.
Frankly, advertising online generally doesn't bother me...seeing as I'm somewhat to blame (along with a huge chunk of Modem Media's first 200 employees.) Hell, I even like to see some of it. But when it starts crashing browsers, not even allowing me to see the content I've requested? It's gone past being an annoyance, and moved straight into "You people should be killed."
Now, since you never know from ESPN when the content is going to be linked to NBC, I could be following an Olympic Games link and all of a sudden find my browser crashed out. It's like playing Minesweeper...only not at all fun. All I want to know is hockey information from Torino, and instead, I get crashed browser. Fascinating.
This has been going on for days now. They HAVE to know there's a problem...because my browser IS spitting "Bad link" messages on the bottom. Which means that there's a configuration problem with NBC's site...which means Doubleclick has fucked up. And NBC may well be pissed...but not pissed enough to get Doubleclick to fix the fucking thing.
Having worked on the Atlanta Games website for AT&T...I CAN tell you this: You have ONE chance to get it right, and your window for fixing problems isn't days or weeks, like it is for a lot of other websites. Event websites, especially like the Olympic Games are every other year, for about two weeks...then you're fucked. Each day you miss is about 7% of your ad revenue. The Superbowl is like that, I'm sure. Imagine having an ad during the Superbowl pointed at a site...and your site being down during that ad. So much for your several million dollar investment.
In any case, I'll be going to CNNSI...which has lousy writing, and not very good organization, because I can read it...which is more than I can say for ESPN/NBC. Fuckers.
Posted by Glenn at February 21, 2006 10:41 AMESPN: The Worldwide linker to sports.