Preakness Stakes on NBC HD
NBC will broadcast the 133rd running of the Preakness Stakes Saturday. Coverage starts at 4:30, giving betters plenty of time to place a wager before the 6:15 post time. NBC will broadcast all the race plus all of the pre-race coverage in full 1080i high definition.
Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown is the 1-2 favorite for Saturday’s Preakness in Baltimore, having won the Derby by a comfortable margin. The only other Derby competitor to run against Big Brown in the Preakness is Gayego, who finished 17th at Churchill Downs. Gayego has been given 8-1 odds to win, and is the second choice behind Big Brown.
UPDATE 4/16/2008: With the Game 5 of the NHL Stanley Cup Western Final between Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings scheduled to begin at 1:30 PM ET, NBC faces a potential scheduling conflict if the me goes into overtime.
Today NBC issued a statement which suggests that they expect bigger ratings from Preakness pre-race coverage than from a double-overtime NHL Playoff game.
While local affiliates in Dallas and Detroit will stay with the game until conclusion, coverage in the rest of the country will shift to Versus at the completion of first OT. In addition, some markets may pre-empt coverage earlier, resulting in no coverage for the game in those markets.
Click here to see all upcoming high definition events in the next two weeks.
You can follow any comments for this post through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.
May 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am
That is a HUGE slap in the face to the NHL! The race doesn’t even start until 6:15. How long can they talk about a 2 minute race? I could maybe understand if the end of the race was overlapping with the beginning of the game and they were going to join in progress, but cutting away from double OT in Game 5 of the Conference Finals tells the NHL your best product is worse than even horse racing.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Arnold, I hear ya. Here is what NBC had to say about it. I am copying and pasting from this web site. “Today NBC issued a statement which suggests that they expect bigger ratings from Preakness pre-race coverage than from a double-overtime NHL Playoff game.”