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NBC Olympics Coverage: the best thing for network television in a while, or?

By fred | August 19, 2008

The Olympics. It’s happening, still right now as we speak, and I have to ask : are you guys happy with the way NBC is covering the games (so far) ??

I’ll be clear: I don’t watch the Olympics, I have not, not even a little, I just don’t care really, and I don’t plan on changing this. But that’s not the point, the question is : how is NBC doing ? Because if you listen to about everyone involved, it seems they couldn’t have done a better job !

Sure, the ratings are great, best in ages, NBC is making billions of dollars and so all is well. But I can’t help but finding this whole mess a real shame myself, and I can’t see why this is to be looked at as nothing but a success for network television. And the fact that it is, has me worried about the future of network television, really…

Maybe it’s me, and maybe I’m in the minority here, but to know that in the whole world people watched the opening ceremony at the same time except in the US, because there you had to wait 12 hours because NBC wanted to air the thing on primetime, it really strikes me as something incredibly wrong. Aren’t you ashamed of that ? Aren’t you pissed that when Michael Phelps is breaking all possible records, you don’t get to watch it live as the rest of the world, but need to wait for hours until NBC deems appropriate to press “Play” ??

Sure, there’s always the Internet or maybe you’re lucky enough to get some Canadian feeds, but that doesn’t change the facts. If you don’t want or can’t watch it when it happens, you’re free to record it and watch it later, but why should everyone be forbidden to live the moment as it happens like is done everywhere else in the world, just so that NBC can try and make a few more millions ?

Couldn’t have they aired it live, and then re-air it on prime time or something ? Sure, some people would have already seen it, but that was already the case, they just went hunting for their feeds online. But this is exactly why network television is doomed : they’re not trying to see what people want to watch, they’re trying to impose what people should watch, and when and how they should do it. They want to have full control, and that’s exactly what the online world is all about : give control back to us, the people. It’s up to viewers to decide what they want to watch and when, not some network exec.

You would think things like this would be source of embarrassment, not congratulations :

On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern time and at 8 p.m. in Beijing, the anchor Carl Quintanilla and the reporter Darren Rovell were talking on camera when the opening ceremony started at the National Stadium nearby. As the sky turned a bright, pyrotechnic red, “you can see Darren looked like he swallowed a canary,” the anchor Joe Kernen joked on Monday’s show.

“We figured fireworks would be in the end” of the ceremonies, not the beginning, Mr. Kernen added. “It just came out of nowhere, and we were not going to mention any of that stuff.”

It sounds like CNBC was adhering to NBC’s the ceremonies-start-when-we-say-they-start script. “We didn’t know how much trouble we were going to be in, so we didn’t joke about it” on Friday’s show, the co-anchor Becky Quick added on Monday.

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