I’m having an odd experience watching the Chiefs and Broncos on Sunday Night Football.
Because AT&T U-Verse is in a dispute over carriage fees with Tegna, the parent company of local NBC affiliate KSDK-5, the channel has been dropped from the provider’s lineup until a new deal is struck. This has been really annoying to my wife, because it means we haven’t been able to record “Jeopardy!” for several days, so she’s missed some of Alex Trebek’s final shows.
It also means I don’t have access to the national Sunday Night Football telecast with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. There’s no live stream alternative available, even for the radio broadcasts in Kansas City, Denver, or on Westwood One.
However, I found the game on Universo, one of NBC’s Spanish cable channels. U-Verse doesn’t carry it in HD, but I’m happy just to be able to watch the game. With only one year of high school Spanish, I understand maybe a dozen words (e.g. “Los Broncos de Denver”) from whoever these broadcasters are. But I’ve watched plenty of NFL games without any audio in sports bars and poker rooms, so as long as I have the video, I’m good.
Not being able to see the NBC broadcast (the English version) meant I missed something on the pre-game show I’d been looking forward to. In a very clever move, the producers brought in Steve Kornacki — king of MSNBC’s big board on election night and for several days after — to break down some of the playoff possibilities at this point in the NFL season. Fortunately, the segment was posted to Twitter, so todo está bien.
For a look at the NFL Playoff Picture, let's go to the touchscreen with @SteveKornacki from @NBCNews! pic.twitter.com/CHkA17cO6D
— Sunday Night Football (@SNFonNBC) December 7, 2020