Aug 20, 2008
How can you have 1 million hours of Olympic coverage, and still manage to piss people off? NBC shows us how.
As some of you may have heard, there is this thing called the 2008 Olympics going on over in Beijing right now. As some of you may have also heard, there is this Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt…he’s pretty fast. He ran in the 200 Meter finals today at 10:20 am (10:20 pm Beijing time). Viewers that wanted to watch tuned into NBC for their psuedo-live coverage. Only problem? It wasn’t on. From The Big Lead,
The race was at 10:20 am, and despite checking USA, MSNBC and NBC, we couldn’t find it anywhere. Why? Because the greedy suits at NBC wanted to ’save’ the race for tonight. What a fucking joke. This is an absolute abomination. (, thanks to a reader.) Ten minutes after the race, ESPN, Fox, SI, CBS Sports and Yahoo all blared the headline. So now everyone in America has to wait 11 hours and 50 minutes to watch it? Our Canadian readers were able to watch it online!
You know, all of these hundreds of hours of Olympic coverage on television and the internet are pretty pointless if you can’t watch the events you want to watch when they’re live. Contrary to what NBC thinks, I could handle Bob Costas’ toupee before 11 am (not everyday though). As we’ve already seen, NBC has found the Olympics to be a ratings bonanza, but still, at some point, don’t they run the risk of alienating viewers who can inadvertently find out the results of an event on CNN or Yahoo, 12 hours before NBC shows live coverage? (something I’ve already done a couple of times). Of course, NBC is probably thinking, and rightly so, that they’ll still have enough viewers to alienate those who are surprised online, or those that view the games live on the web. Or, maybe they just don’t care? After all, they did pay $894 million dollars for the rights to these games…and they’re obviously trying to make sure they come away with a few coins in their pocket before its all over.
…yes. I really did just insert a Bob Costas picture into this post.
The Big Lead: NBC Blows: Give ESPN the Olympics in 2014
Sports Business Digest: The Cultural Significance of Michael Phelps
2 comments
SO i looked at the schedule on NBC last night cause I wanted to watch the BMX stuff. They said it wold be live in the 9 o’clcok hour. It was not. Even the guide on my cable box said live at 9:20 pm BMX racing. I ended up watching it on CBC in late night.
On the nbc olympics website it said live next tothe little BMX icon so I tried that and it was footage of the trials from about 6 months ago.
I agree with you ESPN should get the London olympics
I thought that once the insipid Katie Couric was gone from the Today show that NBC would use some of that time to cover actual events. No, once again we see Matt Lauer and Al Roker attempting synchronized swimming among the MANY fluff pieces. Why in the world aren’t they showing an actual Olympic event during this time? And do Matt, Meredith, Al, etc. seriously have no shame whatsoever? Yes–give the next Olympics to ESPN!
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