NBC Has Spoiled the Olympics
…By Pretending They Won’t Be Spoiled
Four hours. That’s roughly the amount of time I had to wait in between when Michael Phelps won his record 23rd Olympic medal (19th gold) and when I could actually see the feat. Yes, I’m sure I could have tracked down the footage on some feed somewhere. But earlier in the day I actually paid for Playstation’s Vue service just to get access to the NBC feed.¹ And I found out that NBC is apparently still living in 1986.
We all know why NBC is delaying the presentation of the main events in their coverage.² It’s about women. And making the games more like reality television. I mean, they actually said this. But really, it’s obviously about advertising. A shit ton of advertising. If my feed was indicative of all feeds, I think there was actually far more minutes of advertising than actual Olympic events. It’s a god-awful experience all around.
What’s crazy is that NBC thinks this is an appropriate way to showcase the Olympics in 2016. Yes, I live in the tech-centric Bay Area.³ And yes, tens of millions of people still watched the delayed advertising, er… coverage. But basically everyone in the U.S. at this point has a smartphone. And on those smartphones are not only the results of what happened in the Olympics in real time, but millions of us are getting push notifications about the results hours before we can actually watch them.
When Phelps won the relay, I got no less than four push notifications alerting me to the fact. Twitter. The New York Times app. CNN’s app. And, in an ultimate bit of irony, even NBC’s app. Even if you resolve not to check your phone to “spoil” the events, they’re going to be spoiled for you. Even if you remember to turn off some of your push notifications, you’re probably not going to remember to turn off all of them. Welcome to 2016.
As I bitched about this last night on Twitter, the only bits of pushback was that NBC’s app does offer a bunch of feeds for those who want to watch events in real time. But, as far as I can tell, that’s only true of some events.⁴ I searched and searched and searched for the Phelps race. No dice. I had to wait those four hours and sit through the mind-numbing ads. And then, finally, around 11 pm, NBC was nice enough to put on the main event. Perhaps by “Prime Time” they mean a prime number?
Again, yes, I probably could have figured out a way to track down the footage somewhere online — though not in GIF-form, because that would be too audience-friendly — I just can’t believe NBC pulls such bullshit and forces us along for the ride. It’s like they believe that if they bury their heads deep enough in the sand, they might squeeze out the other side in 1986, surrounded by people still glued to their televisions in prime time.
Instead, here’s what they get for their $1.23 billion trouble:
American viewership for the opening ceremony of the Olympic games was down by 35% compared with the London games in 2012. NBC, which broadcast the ceremony in the country, only got 26.5m viewers.
The early numbers from last night seem slightly better, no doubt thanks to Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, and co, but still down just about 20 percent from the last Olympics. And these numbers are the lowest in terms of ratings the event has seen since the 1990s.
Look, if NBC wants to package together the highlights to show in prime time, that’s fine. But as part of the contract they signed to broadcast the games, they should be forced to show all events live. And, as fun as it is to think of Bravo as the new tennis channel, they should probably put all this footage on the networks where the viewers are increasingly hanging out — meaning the social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
Again, it’s 2016.
¹ Sling, which I normally use doesn’t currently offer NBC.
² A delay made more ridiculous given just how close Rio is to all the U.S. timezones — just one hour off the east coast.
³ Which makes the delay even more pronounced (though still ridiculous as we’re just four hours off of Rio).
⁴ Not to mention the millions of folks who have to watch the events on NBC itself because they don’t know about the online footage…
