Interesting NBC sub-channel move vis a vis CBS

Tonight on NBC in the New York market, NBC's usual Thursday night lineup is being preempted for an NBC Sports presentation of a pre-season football game, Giants at New England. However, viewers not into football can still catch NBC's Thursday night line up on 4.2, NBC's NY Nonstop channel. Makes sense, but I've never seen them do this before. They've started running Law & Order reruns on Saturday nights, but this is the first time they've run a full prime-time lineup on the sub-channel. It's also interesting because CBS Sports is also preempting CBS's Thursday night lineup in the New York market for a pre-season NFL game, but they have no sub-channels to air the normal line up on. So NBC is using the sub-channel to keep viewers who are not into the game on NBC, rather than switching to another network.

Originally Posted by NYCLA*

Tonight on NBC in the New York market, NBC's usual Thursday night lineup is being preempted for an NBC Sports presentation of a pre-season football game, Giants at New England. However, viewers not into football can still catch NBC's Thursday night line up on 4.2, NBC's NY Nonstop channel. Makes sense, but I've never seen them do this before. They've started running Law & Order reruns on Saturday nights, but this is the first time they've run a full prime-time lineup on the sub-channel. It's also interesting because CBS Sports is also preempting CBS's Thursday night lineup in the New York market for a pre-season NFL game, but they have no sub-channels to air the normal line up on. So NBC is using the sub-channel to keep viewers who are not into the game on NBC, rather than switching to another network.

Ah hah! Just another tidbit to slip into my pocket of dtv advantages. This is seriously one of the coolest things I've seen done yet after the digital transition (A close second place is Eureka's: Up to 20 Sub channels?).

I'd like to see this done during awards shows too. Wonder if this will only be a New York thing or if other networks and local affiliates will latch on to the idea.

That's an inovative use for subchannels if ever there was one.

Instead of soap fans (hate 'em. The soaps, not the fans ) having their programms interupted by the government or news flashes, they could just tune to the subchannel to watch the show in it's intirety.

Weather alerts? Put a crawl at the bottom of the screen to warn viewers instead of interupting the program with live doppler or whatever.

Sounds like a win win situation for the viewers.