Nothing really sucks the excitement out of watching an Olympic event than already knowing the outcome before it even starts. Unfortunately, with NBC’s five hour tape delay for many events that is exactly what is happening. SPOILER ALERT – the USA Men’s Swim Team lose the 4×100 Freestyle relay to the French. Also, Jordyn Wieber fails to make the all-around in Women’s Gymnastics and Michael Phelps continues to be overrated this year.
A moment of silence for the victims of the 2005 terror attack on London was cut from the NBC Broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies. Picture above depicts the glowing rings from the Ceremony.
NBC’s coverage of the 2012 London Olympics has been laughably awful, beginning with their heavily edited broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies and continuing with painfully awkward commentary especially in the gymnastics arena. (How about we give Wieber some respect and not zoom in on her while she is crying? Is that too much to ask? She’s an Olympic athlete not a zoo animal.) Not to mention the constant commercials. I think I’ve seen more ads with Ryan Lochte than have actually seen Ryan Lochte
With NBC’s staunch commitment to air the ‘big’ events in Primetime, American viewers are forced to watch contests hours after they have already occurred. (Usually with stellar commentary. SPOILER ALERT – The swimmer with the fastest time will win the gold.)
The question is “why the delay?” NBC’s explanation is that Primetime is when most people are available to watch TV and they want to allow folks a chance to see the more exciting events. That’s great! On the surface, it is really thoughtful and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the big companies that advertise during Primetime.
Oh, I went there. Call me skeptical, but I’m fairly certain that NBC is more interested in catering to the corporations that shove money at them than the casual viewer. Yet another instance of the almighty dollar controlling what we see on TV. NBC’s five-hour tape delay is all an effort to appease the advertisers.
But is it working?
I don’t think so. Once I learned that the USA Men’s Gymnastics team finished 6th in the team competition, I didn’t bother watching. I changed the channel which was probably not NBC’s goal. Also, why not air events on Sunday afternoon instead of waiting until Primetime? Maybe they should’ve talked to the NFL and NASCAR because that time slot seems to work wonderfully for them.
And, if you’ve been watching the Olympics and have a Twitter, then you are probably familiar with #NBCFail.
It seems I’m not the only one miffed.
The backlash of the fail in coverage has been harsh, but is NBC listening? Do they care?
NBC’s response is that many of the events are on live streaming through their website. Yes, a few are there. Swimming is not. Gymnastics are not. Unless you are passionate about Handball (and actually know the rules), then you are going to be disappointed.
In my opinion, the real losers here are the athletes. They’ve trained for years and years to make it to a big stage and can only be seen five hours after the fact (or not at all if you are a skeet shooter). Disappointing and disheartening.
Way to sully the Olympic spirit, NBC.
In all fairness, with three different channels showing events, there are some events you can see live. I’ve watched Women’s Basketball, both Men’s and Women’s Volleyball (beach and indoor), Rowing, Archery and Whitewater Kayaking. (I did attempt to watch Water Polo but the thought of treading water for all that time made me exhausted.)
If it’s any consolation, from the promos I have seen, the real #NBCFail will be their fall schedule.
Post your #NBCFail moments in the comments below.
How about we start with how I just watched the Gymnastics coverage and we were never actually shown what Aly Raisman’s score was.
How about the NBC correspondent not knowing who Tim Burners-Lee is, and saying that on national television (and given that it’s the Olympics, thus on an international forum)? You have the man’s name, just be a professional, introduce him, and keep your mouth shut about your own failings!
How about promos for Missy Franklin being interviewed about her gold medal when the race hadn’t aired yet? How about not showing skeet shooting when the USA had TWO gold medalists? How about the commentators consistently calling the female gymnasts ‘divas?’
Oh don’t GET ME STARTED about their failure to show the scores. They’ve done that with both the women’s and men’s gymnastics. I tweeted about it a few nights ago; it was very frustrating. Througout the entire competition we had no idea what the team standings were for the men’s gymnastics, which at the time I thought was simple incompetency of the producer. But now, after watching how we got reminded every three seconds where the US women’s team was in placement throughout the competition, I think it’s because the men were not in the race for the gold and so they simply kept it hush hush. That makes me so angry I see red.
I would love to give them the benefit of the doubt that they simply saw problems with the men’s coverage and changed things for the women’s, but 1) I’m not naive, and 2) they don’t DESERVE the benefit of the doubt after their tone-deaf handling of the 7/7 Tribute That According to NBC Never Was (because human suffering in other countries is not relevant to the American experience, or whatever the really lame — and frankly offensive! — excuse was).
NBC needs to buck up and realize that a lot has changed in the world due to technology since 2008. Twitter and Facebook were not nearly as problematic in the Bejing games because they had yet to completely take over the world (though they were definitely on their way). Instead of NBC whining that other networks didn’t take heat for the games being shown on tape delay back then, they need to realize that it worked better then because throughout our daily lives we weren’t being assaulted at every angle by possible “spoilers”. I actually had to do work to be spoiled back then; now I just have to forget for a second that I shouldn’t check my phone (as is habit) every time I have a moment of down time while waiting in a line and the whole evening’s surprise is ruined. It’s a problem. It’s a problem they should have forecast and had measures in place to deal with before they took on the job. And if they don’t give a crap and only care about the money, they need to step aside in two years and let another network show them how it’s done.
But, you know. I’m not angry or anything.
Let us not forget the part were after the Men’s relay team won Gold they were congratulated on being part of Michael Phelp’s historic achievement, and not on winning Gold.
Or the part where a 16 year old Chinese woman swam faster than men – so it must mean she’s on drugs or something, because women cannot possibly be better than men at anything.
I’m of two minds on the Ye Shiwen thing…
Physiology is physiology, and while I don’t like the idea that women are not as strong as men, in some cases it does come down to the fact that men — as it is in swimming — get much faster times in general for a reason. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t always exceptions to the “rule”, of course, but it does look a little improbable. So add in the simple fact that China has a long history of doping, well. The question will, and probably should, get asked.
Do I think it was the NBC commentators place to do so all over the airwaves and keep bringing it up over every night’s broadcast? No. That conversation should be had behind the scenes between the people in charge of making sure the Olympic competitions are fair, and we should only hear about it if she came back positive on any testing done and is being disqualified. Otherwise, all they’re doing is tarnishing the accomplishment of a young women who it’s just as likely is completely innocent of any wrong-doing.
I was actually going to pitch in and say my other NBC fail is that I can’t watch the Olympics, because I’m one of those “evil cable cutters.” NBC’s posted all of this advice on how to watch it anyway, only I can’t get it over the air even over an antenna because we live in too rural of an area. And yet we’re only an hour south of DC: an hour south of the capital, and yet that’s too far to get any Olympic coverage. And to watch it online we’d need not only a cable subscription, but one that includes CNBC, or something. Sigh. But reading what you’ve all been saying, perhaps I’m better off not seeing it all if I’d have to listen to all that nonsense.
At least NBC’s crazy cable subscription nonsense is better than ESPN’s during the World Cup, but that’s a whole other issue…
Right there with you–never thought I’d have to have a cable subscription to watch olympics coverage online.
I know, right?! It’s such nonsense. I keep thinking I should like write to the Olympics committee and be like, you guys should stream the Olympics yourselves on your own website for the future. I think FIFA may have done that.
We’ve actually decided to stop watching because we don’t want to give NBC the ratings (and as DirecTV users, our information is submitted). So if I watch further I will be watching BBC coverage over our Slingbox from the UK.
That’s the one thing I’m glad about: that I’m not contributing to NBC’s nonsense in any way.