The webcast of the
Kazaň vs. Slovan game earlier today, whenever it was running, was excellent. The Russian announcer (of undisclosed name) was very good, as KHL.ru announcers typically are.
However, once again, there were unforgivable, amateurish SNAFUs at the beginning of the webcast.
Once again, the webcast started with showing the ending of a
different game, Avtomobilist vs. Atlant. Yet there was no announcer for
that game -- even
no time-keeping on the screen!
So, you were watching a different game from the one you purchased from KHL.ru -- and you even had no idea how much longer that other game would run.
To make matters worse, that other game went into
overtime. And then it went to a
shoot-out.
But, before the shoot-outs began, the picture suddenly switched to Kazaň for the proper game. "Hooray!" you might think. But your joy would be premature. We got to hear 3 national anthems: the full Russian anthem, the local Tatar anthem, and 50% of the Slovak anthem (they cut it by half -- very impolite, while imposing
two "home team national anthems" on the visitors).
And then? The start of the game, you might think? No! They cut
back to Yekaterinburg for the shootout with Atlant! Even worse: they cut back there while the shootouts were already
in progress!
You only got to see the third pair of shooters, and those following.
The shoot-out in Yekaterinburg was over soon. Again, you might be happy, saying, "So now we're going back to Kazaň for the proper game, right?"
No, we're not!
While the game in Kazaň was
already running, KHL.ru continued streaming, for several minutes, the live picture of an
empty ice-rink in Yekaterinburg
to their paying subscribers:
Only after 3.5 minutes were played in Kazaň, did they return the webcast to Kazaň. And the announcer there was in the midst of his speech, so it was
not like the broadcast was really just beginning then. It was well in regular progress from the national anthems onwards -- they just "forgot"
to return the webcast from Yekaterinburg to Kazaň as soon as it was appropriate. (The most appropriate, of course, would have been
never to show the game from Yekaterinburg in a webcast clearly labeled as Ak Bars vs. Slovan.)
And to finish off this unholy mess, they posted this
entire SNAFU to the game archives as well. So, even in KHL.ru archives, you can't watch the game in Kazaň from the beginning -- once again there, you get to see the game and shootout from Yekaterinburg, you get to watch the empty ice-rink from Yekaterinburg for several minutes, etc.
It appears that the webcasts are transferred to the KHL.ru archives fully automatically. That's
great, because it seems that the games are available for watching in the archives as soon as they are completed in real time. (Something that NHL GameCenter is unable to deliver to
their paying customers, not to mention all of their obnoxious blackouts.) On the other hand, it seems that no one is checking for any errors in the webcasts, and if there are grave errors in the webcasts, as has already happened in 2 out of 4 Slovan games this season so far, these errors are
not fixed in the archives. On the contrary: they are
reproduced there, as if captured for eternity.
If this was NHL GameCenter, someone responsible for webcasts there would likely get fired, or at least be threatened with that option.
Apparently, things work a bit differently in Russia. After all, you know what the acronym "SNAFU" really stands for.
