I live 120 miles from one of the largest sporting events in the world and can see very little of it live because of broadcaster NBC’s policy.
They save the big events for their evening show running form 7:30 to 11ish to maximize viewers and advertising money. Before now this has not been a problem, I get the Canadian broadcaster CBC and their coverage of both winter and summer Olympics has typically been excellent. While not as good as the BBC, its far better then NBC’s jingoistic/sensationalistic coverage.
However CBC lost the rights to some Canadian channel that I don’t get, so I’m forced to watch NBC.
Clearly NBC overbid for the games a few years ago and this week has claimed it will loose something like $200 million covering the Vancouver Olympics. NBC is blaming a soft advertising marker, but ultimately the fault lies with the broadcaster. When the TV contract for the 2010 Winter/2012 Summer games was up for bid NBC paid about $2.2 billion for these two events. Its bid was substantially bigger than any of the other US companies and about $900 million more than runner up Fox bid for the two events.
For me the biggest issue with tape delay is the loss of the drama. For the woman’s downhill we got a 90 minute edited package shown 5 or 6 hours after the event finished. The growing tension as each racer leaves the start house, comparing the interval times and where the clock stops when the racer crosses the line is lost.
With the internet, new media and the resulting gush of information coming into my life I know all of this in real time. It’s far more difficult, indeed verging on the impossible for someone with half an interest in sports to avoid big results for a few hours untill NBC feels it’s best to share their coverage with us.
This tension is what makes live sport so compelling. It’s exciting because we don’t know what’s going to happen. Unfortunately NBC has yet to work it out, after 6 hours of tape delay, we know what’s going to happen, and for me that takes so much away.
There is some better news once you get away from what ever NBC has chosen to include in their main evening coverage. For example as the US was not involved and therefore NBC was not interested, MSNBC carried the Canada vs. Norway hockey blow out live. For many Canadians the start of men’s hockey is the real opening of the Olympics.
Clearly there has been a lot of criticism of NBC and their choices to not carry major events live. It got to the point that the local NBC affiliate KING-5 in Seattle published a note on their website essentially saying “don’t blame us for this, it’s NBC and we don’t have a say in it”.
I’m lucky I can buy tickets, get into the car and see all the curling, speed skating or hockey I want.