The Problem with Canadian and American Figure Skating

As I'm sure you all know, both Canadian and American nationals are happening this weekend, and as this is happening, people are questioning why figure skating isn't more popular in countries like the US and Canada, when our skaters do so well. I can tell you with great certainty I know why.

It's because it is so inaccessible.

I've been looking all day trying to access the senior events from both competitions, and so far, I've had absolutely no luck.
For the US, NBC is showing some skaters, but not many, IceNetwork shows everyone else, but from everything I've seen in skating forums and twitter, the stream isn't working. Considering IceNetwork is a paid subscription service, this absolutely should NOT be the case.

In Canada, TSN and CTV are showing, like NBC, some of the top skaters, but the earlier flights in the senior events appear to not be available. Period. Skate Canada is showing practices and the lower level events on their Dailymotion channel, but in the past, these streams have been unwatchable because of lag and low video quality.

CTV/TSN waste an extraordinary amount of time re-showing programs over the course of the weekend. I hate to break it to you CTV/TSN, you're not gaining viewership this way, and it's not going to make you any extra money. No one is going to pay you to be able to watch the 2 events a season you cover, and this coming from a die-hard fan with no cable subscription.

On top of the lack of coverage, the coverage that is available on CTV/TSN is only available to people who have a cable subscrption, but less and less people have a cable subscription, meaning that less people than in past years have access to the (limited) coverage. This means that skating cannot be as popular as it is in countries like Japan because networks are not nearly as devoted to showing it as they could be.

Speaking of Japan, they are doing better coverage of the Ladies and Men's events at US Nationals than NBC by far. Apparently  Japanese network called J-Sports 4 will be showing all of the ladies and men's events this weekend, which is better than we can say of NBC.

As far as YouTube videos go, they are usually hard to find in the first place because the networks are more protective of their exclusive rights to show these programs. This means if they go up, they usually disappear pretty quickly.

So far, I've only been able to find one YouTube video from US nationals, Scimeca and Knierim's short program.




UPDATE:

Bless YouTube channel Sam Canada for also uploading two videos, of Kayne and O Shea and Castelli and Tran, so we're at three videos but that does little to ease my frustration.