The opening ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC, Canada will begin at 6:00 pm PST. **Yet NBC has chosen to TAPE DELAY the opening ceremonies for the West Coast. ** The Olympics are in our backyard, in our own timezone. Yet NBC will not televise the ceremonies live on the West Coast.
In fact, there are reports NBC is doing whatever it can to prevent any live feeds of the Olympics, other than what NBC may choose to provide to the American audience, including Internet access.
Bad news: I’m in Seattle tomorrow, so I won’t get home until 1900.
American coverage of the Olympics has been abysmal for at least 20 years. Too few events covered live, and the ones that are live in the Eastern time zone are tape-delayed for the West Coast. Sucks to American coverage!
I didn’t realize how sucky live TV coverage of the Olympics in the US was until Beijing 2008. They didn’t show the 100m sprint live. That is just plain ridiculous. You cannot tape delay the greatest event of the Olympics (and one of the greatest moments in Olympic history), especially when it gets over in 10 seconds, features the fastest human on Earth, and gets a front page mention on every news website 8 hours before you broadcast it to viewers in the US.
I don’t see how tape-delay is screwing anyone. I watch a lot of sports on tape delay (skating/riding) and it’s perfectly possible to avoid spoilers, if that matters to you. Without tape delay and editing we’d get to see far fewer events and less of them. NBC is broadcasting more hours of events overall. They couldn’t do that if it wasn’t for tape delay & editing. I’ll take more coverage of more events over three hours of live prime-time events, please.
Besides, I’m just going to tivo everything anyway. Without commercials, the Olympics only take a couple days. Honestly - who here doesn’t fast forward past the Parade of Nations?
That argument is acceptable when it’s a regular sporting event. However, when history is created, as happens once in a while with the Olympics, you get texts, emails, phonecalls, status updates, breaking news announcements on other unrelated programs, etc. There’s no practical way to avoid spoilers, unless you live on a farm. Under a rock. With NBC service
Nah. The riding & skating events I’m talking about take days to complete. The hundred meter sprint is just a blip in time compared to figure skating, which is a spotlight event for the whole two weeks. Avoiding spoilers until after the main broadcast is perfectly doable. I’ve done it lots of times and it’s quite common on all the skating lists I follow. I do it every year. It’s just requires a bit of adjustment.
Most sports, even at the Olympics, are shown on tape delay simply because they happen on the opposite side of the planet and they can’t all go on at prime time. This year we’re getting a lot of live events on the off-channels because the time zone works. But most of Torino was tape-delayed.
As far as history being made - you know the big “Miracle on Ice” hockey game was on tape delay? It doesn’t seem to have lessened the impact any.
I know some people really enjoy the live aspect and that’s cool. It just seems to me like live prime-time coverage is the exception not the rule. That being the case, it’s not screwing anyone to do more of it.
If it makes you feel any better, NBC is going to take a bath on this thing. Maybe this means we’ll finally get a network that can actually broadcast the Olympics properly.
No, it’s not. The Olympics are a sporting event. The Games should be broadcast live to their fullest extent.
NBC has treated it like a goddamn reality show for too long now. [Tired, Old Rant] That’s why they see fit to move the freaking 100m Sprint to a more convenient time. It works for The Apprentice, doesn’t it?
Can’t wait until ESPN picks up the Olympics contract.
Since switching to Uverse, this will be my first Olympics without CBC. Damn. Forget about seeing much luge or bobsled, if you’re lucky you’ll see the final runs of the Americans plus the medalists. Look for lots of mogul skiing and freestyle skiing because the Americans are strong there. Of course, women’s figure skating trumps everything else. Look for them to tape delay whatever they can so they can put a nice warm and fuzzy up close and personal piece on any Americans that win. Forget about seeing the biathlon or any medal ceremony without an American on the podium. On the plus side, looks like all the hockey will be on MSNBC or CNBC.
Speaking for myself (and I suspect much of America, and even the networks themselves since they always lose money on the games these days), the Olympics jumped the shark decades ago. Seems like its heyday was the pitting of the American wonderchild vs some steroid-ridden Soviet… now I’d get more excited to see the World Cup than a bunch of quasi-pros trying to sell Wheeties boxes and cell phone plans.
I don’t know about screwing anyone, but if there’s the option to show events live as they happen, that’s what I want to see. Vancouver so far from the east coast of the U.S. that big events have to be tape delayed to local prime time.
Ya know, I’m not even sure how much I’m going to watch. When I was a kid, the Olympics were on practically 24x7 and we got to see lots of different kinds of events, not just the popular ones.
BTW, it is VERY hard to avoid spoilers unless you live in a bubble. Between internet boards like this one, coworkers, friends and family members it’s extremely hard to avoid it.
A lot of Americans slag off the BBC for licence fees etc. but one thing they excel at it this kinda stuff. There will be live footage coming at the UK and anyone else who gets it (like in Ireland) for a huge amount of events. Their main stations will be showing a lot of it instead of regular programming and their extra digital channels will have multiple events that you can choose what you want.
Even the Irish channels will be showing all the major events live.
You guys in the states really are getting shafted by NBC on this one.
There are a lot of Brits and Paddies however that have no interest and will be pissed off with the amount of sport on the TV over the next few weeks so it’s godd and bad depending on you perspective.
I’m generally not a big sport fan but I love BIG events and also disappear into the Olympics, World Cup, Rugby World Cup etc.
