Thursday, August 2, 2012

How NBC Cancelled the Olympics

I haven't watched any of the Olympics this year. None. The only events that I know about are stories that have crossed my news ticker or been discussed on the radio. NBC has made the Olympics unwatchable for me.

Aspects of this story are not new and I know that I'm not the only one complaining about their coverage. Delayed broadcasts, edited coverage, an exclusive focus on US athletes, and the insufferable profile pieces that seem to get more airtime than the actual event -- it all sucks.

This is why we get up for the early morning live broadcast of the Tour -- the prime time broadcast is inane.

In previous years, they used some of their other network channels to provide coverage for many of the events that aren't covered in their prime time pile of crap. This used to be the watchable coverage of the Olympics. This year, a scan of all of those channels came up empty. Weekend off hour broadcasts on MSNBC still featured prison stories, NBC's other sports channel was showing an old auto-racing program, and the USA network ran it's usual programs.

Theoretically, they've upped their coverage on the Internet, "engaging" users on Twitter and Facebook. Haven't seen it. Haven't heard anybody talking about it. If it was good, I guarantee that friends and colleagues would be talking about it.

I did hear a spot on the radio where they were talking about the complaints. The mentioned how NBC continues to follow a content structure that dates back to the 1960s. They talked about the complaints from users on Twitter and Facebook, even questioned whether NBC was getting these complaints because they 'courted' new media users. The un-broadcast answer: "No, the coverage has always sucked. Now, more people have the ability to publish their feelings about it." But that was edited out to make the story more dramatic.

So far, the best coverage of the Olympics that I've seen this year was from NBC Delayed. I came across a post from here while browsing through Twitter updates of the Apple-Samsung trial. Hilarious.

No comments: