The blogosphere and twittersphere are buzzing about this Seattle Times column criticizing NBC’s endlessly tape-delayed Olympics coverage, and its complete tone-deafness about the issue. (See also this lengthy Deadspin post, featuring one angry viewer complaint after another.)
I gotta say, I find that, in this instant-information age, the Olympics are rapidly being fundamentally transformed from something I watch on TV to something I hear about on Twitter and then don’t really bother to watch because I already know what’s going to happen. It’s one thing to swear off the Internet for a day so I won’t know who won Boise-TCU, but going offline every day for two whole weeks just isn’t going to happen — I’m no Kyle Whelliston! — so I’m afraid this is going to be a recurring problem.
Case in point: Lindsey Vonn’s big win today. I’m sure it would’ve been very fun to see in living color. But several breaking-news alerts (one of which was auto-posted to my Twitter stream, and thus this blog, before I saw it and deleted it, hoping to spare others the “spoiler”) told me what had happened, and suddenly I just didn’t care enough to put aside the other stuff I was doing in order to watch it. Because, well, sports without suspense isn’t really sports. So although I had NBC on mute all evening, I wasn’t paying enough attention to know when Vonn was up, and thus I missed it. Oh well.
I’m not sure what is the right answer, or combination of answers, to this problem. I understand the desire to put things in prime-time, and clearly, I’m not going to be watching NBC at noon or whatever on a weekday anyway. But it’s a problem, for sure. Alas, it’s hardly surprising that, whatever the answer is, the NBC braintrust — these are the people who gave us “The Jay Leno Show,” remember — doesn’t even seem to be trying to find it. They’re stuck in a mindset that’s not just pre-Twitter but practically pre-Internet, broadcasting a 2010 Olympics in a distinctly 1992 sort of way. They don’t seem to realize there’s anything wrong with that, or that anything has changed in the way people consume information now.
In any case, I can’t speak for the broader populace, but I can definitely say that NBC’s aversion to live coverage of… pretty much anything… is causing me, personally, to watch a lot less of the Olympics than I otherwise might.
The fact that Lindsey Vonn is incredibly hot wasn’t enough for you? (And incredibly married, too…sigh.)
Seriously, NBC is shooting themselves in the foot and every other extremity. Beijing was one thing, because then at least there’s the plausible “but it was happening on the other side of the globe” argument. Here, the stuff is literally between 30 and 150 miles from the U.S. border in the Pacific Time Zone and they still can’t figure out how to get it to us live.
Maybe if they stopped dedicating the lion’s share of the prime-time programming block to non-sports like figure skating and (gack) ice dancing…but I digress. (I mean, the US-Canada men’s hockey game will be on MSNBC to make way for that.)
In a related story, here’s a pretty interesting article about the miserable failure of the NFL Network, a black eye for what is otherwise the most successfully marketed sports league in the US. Note the quote from Comcast VP David Cohen, about 3/4 of the way down:
He describes the network’s offering as “a small additional increment of out-of-market games.”. IOW, the NFL Network is a 24/7/365 channel whose only value is 8 live regular-season games. If you’re one of the hardy few who get the channel, you know what he’s talking about: you’ve been burned by the advertising hype to tune into a re-air of the great Super Bowl XXXIX (Pats-Panthers), which was really damn great, but is only great one time, and is miserable to watch for all but Adam Vinatieri’s family and friends a second time.
Ok, I agree when I found out that Lindsey Von had won gold yesterday, I was a bit disappointed and it did impact my viewing enjoyment. However, had NBC broadcast the women’s downhill live I wouldn’t have seen it anyway. It’s not like I can sit home for two weeks and watch events all day. So really doesn’t NBC have to show the most intriguing events in prime time? Even on tape delay? Sure watching Shaun White win gold was more enjoyable, but at least I got to see Lindsey’s run. The reality is not all events take place at a time when live broadcasting makes sense. Has the internet made broadcast television less relevant? You can’t run a downhill at 9pm EST under lights like you can do the half pipe, so they have to run it during the day, which in this case happens to be in the late afternoon for most of the U.S., broadcast it live and most of the U.S. still won’t see it.
The thing that bothers me is this: the restriction of the streaming to cable subscribers. I was looking forward to watching some of the hockey and curling. But noooo, NBC doesn’t want me to see this if I’m not paying somebody. It just bugs me – there’s got to be a way to make money on streaming without restricting people’s ability to see the best hockey tournament in the world.
had NBC broadcast the women’s downhill live I wouldn’t have seen it anyway. It’s not like I can sit home for two weeks and watch events all day.
I acknowledged this point in my post (“I understand the desire to put things in prime-time, and clearly, I’m not going to be watching NBC at noon or whatever on a weekday anyway”). However, several points:
1) You mentioned watching Shaun White win gold live, and how it was admittedly more enjoyable than watching Lindsey Vonn win gold on tape-delay. But here’s the thing: I didn’t get to watch White’s win live, either. I found out he’d won Gold when one of my Facebook friends posted something about it several hours before it aired where I am. That’s because the entire Mountain and Pacific Time Zones — including people in Seattle, who are like an hour’s drive away from the Games! — get everything on tape-delay (even though, in the case of West Coast folks, they’re in the same stinkin’ time zone as the Olympics!). There’s no way that can be justified on grounds of necessity. It’s pure greed/sloth by NBC.
2) Your argument only applies to weekdays. So why are they still following the same tape-delay model on the weekends?
3) NBC has various cable channels, which they are already using for some Olympic coverage. As the linked Seattle Times article points out, why couldn’t NBC broadcast high-interest midday events, like the downhill competition, live on MSNBC or CNBC, and then re-broadcast them in tape-delay during prime-time? That way, folks who are home (lots of people work from home, stay at home with their kids, etc.), or who would take a long lunch break to watch America’s skiing hotties, or whatever, can do so, and those who must (or would rather) wait until prime-time can do that. Presumably NBC is afraid that, by doing this, they’d “spoil” their prime-time show, but that just demonstrates how stuck they are in a pre-Interwebs mentality. Their prime-time show is already spoiled, because you can’t keep a lid on the results anymore. Also having a live broadcast won’t meaningfully add to this problem. People who are already consciously trying to avoid learning the results (by staying away from Twitter, Facebook, all sports websites, all news websites, not checking e-mail that might have breaking-news alerts, etc.) can surely also make the sacrifice of not watching MSNBC. Why, the vast majority of Americans, myself included, already make that sacrifice on a daily basis! 🙂
4) In addition to the cable channels, there’s also this thing — you may have heard of it, though Jeff Zucker apparently hasn’t — called the Internet. NBC, admittedly, is offering live-streaming of some events, but only some (I don’t think you could watch Lindsey Vonn live online even if you wanted to), and only to people who are on the cool-kids list, i.e., they get their Internet through this or that ISP, and can log in as such, ESPN360-style. So if you’re in college — another large group of potential viewers with lots of free time during business hours, I might add — and you get your Internet through your dorm, you’re shit out of luck (unless your college has struck a deal with NBC, I guess). Likewise if you have broadband at work, but not at home. Or apparently, if you’re a Comcast subscriber who only has Internet, but not cable TV. That’s right: according to Deadspin, NBC, which is owned by Comcast, is preventing Internet-only Comcast subscribers from watching NBC’s coverage over the Internet. If that’s not an object lesson in the dangers of cable/TV/Internet monopolies, I dunno what is. … Anyway, the point is, I understand NBC is not running a charity here, but surely there is some way, as B. Minich said, to make money on streaming without making it impossible — not just expensive or annoying, but impossible — for vast swaths of your potential viewership to watch your broadcast live.
Another key point from Ron Judd’s linked Seattle Times column, which hits home for me:
“Does NBC consider or care that delaying most events until late night makes them unavailable to families with children?”
How awesome would it be if Becky — a stay-at-home mom who loves the Olympics, and is a middle-class person in the 18-35 target demographic (in other words, NBC should be beating down her door) — could have watched Lindsey Vonn’s run, live, with our girls? Okay, Loyacita wouldn’t have gotten much out of it, but Loyette would have thought it was pretty cool (assuming she wasn’t begging to watch Winnie the Pooh the whole time, which is admittedly a distinct possibility), and hey, maybe at some level, the whole inspiring-story-of-a-female-athlete-overcoming-adversity-to-win-gold would’ve sunk in and made an impression on her impressionable little mind. But noooooo, NBC insists on broadcasting that event long after Loyette’s bedtime, even though it actually happened (just one time zone away!!!) when she was wide awake, and even though NBC has plenty of available ways to broadcast it both live and on tape-delay, if need be.
The only things they are streaming on the Internet are hockey and curling. Which is a weird combo, and a fraction of the games. Plus, I can’t watch the hockey I want to watch because I refuse to pay for cable as a single guy. $70 per month for TV that only I will watch is not worth it.
Interesting question: if you could pay $5 to get in on the live streaming hockey action, would you? $10? $15? What about an iTunes-like, per-game model? Has NBC done any market research on this?
I would pay up to $15, I think. Possibly more.
Apparantly, NBC’s Twitter feed picked up on some of the discontent:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Everyone-Hates-NBCs-Olympic-Tape-DelayIncluding-NBC-2567
But then, I expected NBC to botch this up. When the Pens were in the Stanley Cup Finals last year, they forbade a neat thing the team was doing for fans. The team was airing all playoff games on a massive screen outside their arena – after all, they were selling out, why not sponsor a huge party for fans? But nooooo, NBC wanted everyone at home, watching the game there, not at some “team party” which was surely lowering their rating or something. (This was even more egregious for road games, where there are no local tickets to sell!) They also did this with the Red Wings, who have a tradition of opening up their arena for playoff road games and playing the broadcast for fans on the scoreboard.
The scary thing is that NBC is merging with Comcast. And Comcast owns hockey’s cable affiliate. Last year, if the game was on Versus, they allowed the airing on the big screen. But if NBC executives end up involved, they’ll do something stupid.
Just found this article on Seeking Alpha, which may go a long way toward explaining the seemingly self-defeating NBC coverage.
In a nutshell:
1. NBC is losing money on this Olympics (first time in a long time)
2. Advertisers, and advertiser dollars, don’t easily flow toward mobile devices or streaming applications
3. Comcast (new owners of NBC) run a tight economic ship, not particularly consistent with the risky Olympics
4. Fox will probably outbid NBC for the Sochi games in 2014 (certainly outbid NBC once Comcast is running the NBC show).
Therefore, with money flowing out anyway, and not really caring about the future of the Olympic brand (its your problem, now, Fox), NBC is likely trying to milk this for all the cash they can. As long as the Loy family watches the Vonn run tape-delayed (i.e. the set is tuned to the show), and as long as Jeff Freeze watches, even if a bit disappointed at knowing the outcome, and millions more like them, NBC will collect those advertiser dollars, to help offset their bleeding on these Olympics.
This doesn’t answer why they don’t show the race twice, though I suspect the suits don’t believe that the afternoon audience would actually watch the race twice, and they’d rather have viewership in the more lucrative prime time slot…kind of works its way back around to the original argument for why no one likes tape-delayed anything – this probably includes the potential afternoon viewers.
That last paragraph came out sounding stupid – I meant to compare people’s lack of willingness to watch Vonn race twice to the lack of willingness to watch the uber-exciting SB XXXIX twice. That’s obviously an entirely separate issue from anyone’s willingness to watch the race once, knowing the result. Look, I type a lot faster than I think. FWIW.
NBC seems to be stuck in a “narrative” mentality – Dick Ebersol emphasized storytelling and compelling personal trials over results in the pre-Internet era (rightly, perhaps), but as a lot of people have noted, times have changed. There are plenty of ways for people to track results and plenty of nerds out there who will follow the obscure sports.
I gave up after the Beijing Olympics. Michael Phelps was awesome and fun to watch, but it got really annoying to have this ongoing human interest story overshadowing the events as a whole. Is the Nancy Kerrigan-Tanya Harding drama partly to blame for this?
Brendan, your point is well taken and I was only considering the fact that I am watching on tape delay in the Central time zone. I guess I had heard but didn’t really consider the impact of a full tape delay for the Mountain and Pacific time zones. It makes no sense why those two time zones are not being broadcast to live since they are in the same damn time zone as the games.
NBC obviously does not have very savvy individuals making decisions about programming. It is apparent they are 20th century programmers trying to operate in a 21st century world. The flow of information is so great that an on demand methodology a la iTunes seems like a great solution. As a Comcast Cable/Internet customer, I would surely pay a small amount for online streaming access of events as well as use the OnDemand service on TV.
Perhaps it just speaks to how busy I’ve been, but I’ve been TiVo delaying the tape delay all week, and haven’t really been subject to many spoilers. And also get to fast forward through the boring bits and metric F* ton of commercials NBC is showing this year.
Also, just to be deeply annoying to JD, who derided “non-sports” he does realize that the figure skaters spend just as much time engaged in the actual activity of their sport in one “long program” as the average football player does in an entire game? I mean I had begun to recognize that there wasn’t a lot of there there in a football game a few years ago, but 11 minutes a game, about 5 minutes of offense or defense, and another minute for special teams. It is actually rather ridiculous when you think about it. So really NBC crams several times as much sport into an hour with figure skating as they do with football.
When it comes to sports, I generally go with a don’t knock it unless you’ve tried approach. If you are going to count snow board half pipe (artistic sport) and speed skating (athletic prowess sport) as sports I don’t see how figure skating fails to qualify. And the girls are in way skimpier outfits than the skiers. I mean it’s no women’s beach volleyball (perhaps the best sport ever invented) but hey, it’s winter, what are you gonna do…
Also, you can pick on NBC for showing skating in prime time, except for one thing. Figure skating gets the highest ratings of any sport shown during the winter olympics. NBC would be daft not to show it in prime time, especially with how they’ve been doing lately. Yes they could tighten it up a bit, a few less commercials, work in other sports around it. But when push comes to shove, they are showing skating in prime time whether you think it is a sport or not so get over it.
Not really relevant to the topic, but it occurred to me this morning that having an Olympic event called “half pipe” is really only possible in a sport dominated by stoners. 🙂
Re: figure skating, I’ll make a confession of a dirty little secret, a guilty pleasure for an American male: I used to really like watching figure skating. Like many people, I got hooked during the whole Kerrigan-Harding thing in ’94, and around the same time, developed a huge crush on Katarina Witt. And then when Oksana Baiul (sp?), who beat Kerrigan in an absolute thriller in Lillehammer, came to live & train in Connecticut, as did Gordeeva & Grinkov (?) and some others, I kept following it; I think I even went to see some sort of figure skating event at the Hartford Civic Center sometime in the mid-90s. I watched figure skating, both men’s and women’s, closely in the subsequent Olympics, and even occasionally when the networks would air some lame-oh figure skating event in prime time. I wasn’t obsessed or anything, but I mean, if it was on, I’d watched it. I liked it.
But now… now, figure skating sort of sucks. The new judging system is incomprehensible and impenetrable (including to the commentators, as best as I can tell), and seems to reward a sort of drab technical perfection to the exclusion of artistic merit and athletic risk-taking, to the point where it feels like everyone’s just going through the motions (and those who don’t, get lousy scores). That’s certainly how it felt last night, in what should have been a thrilling contest between the American and the Russian. The good guy won — in a huge, UConn-over-Duke-in-’99 sort of upset, no less — and yet honestly, I was sort of bored. None of the skaters really had any sort of “wow” factor. It was just like, this is my program, I’m trying to earn as many points as possible, The End.
Granted, I never liked men’s figure skating quite as much as women’s, but still. The powers-that-be have really screwed up the sport with all the changes they’ve made since Skategate in 2002. It used to have just about the right balance of artistry, athleticism and technical prowess; not anymore, IMHO. Also, in the old days, when there were judging controversies, it was like the BCS — the controversy at least gave you something to talk about. But now you can’t really have a judging “controversy” because nobody understands the scores anyway, and furthermore, the judging is anonymous (which is about the most idiotic way to resolve a judging corruption scandal I’ve ever heard of — hey, the judging is a problem, so here’s an idea, let’s have less transparency!). Even Scott Hamilton, doing the color commentary, doesn’t seem to have the same level of exuberant, kid-in-a-candy-story enthusiasm he once did. The whole thing has just become sort of… lame.
Figure skating scandals, Olympics miscues and glitches, NBC reporting, athlete scandals … I think you’re all avoiding the key question about all of this:
What would Brian Boitano do??
If that doesn’t help assuage your concerns, you can always watch Olympic feeds from other countries via the internets, as well as check user broadcasts on veetle.com and justin.tv. This is the 21st century folks, and we have 21st-century tools and technologies at our disposal, so stop whining about 20th-century monopoly tactics!