I agree 100% that the most egregious failure in NBC's Olympic coverage the last 8 or 12 years has been their stubborn refusal to show the premier events in real time on one of their cable outlets. We understand they have to make back those outrageous rights fees, but they have never made a convincing case that they could not make as much or more by live cable-casting *and* still doing their produced primetime broadcast network package. Afterall, its not like the problem is spoiling the outcome - as you say, these are easily available on social media, the internet, or just watching ESPN. Daniel complained that NBC is not using all of its resources on the Olympics; that is true, but it is not because they want to show NASCAR or Law & Order reruns; its because they are hoarding prime content for the flagship evening broadcast. It seems to me they would make as much or more revenue from showing gymnastics live on Bravo and swimming on NBCSN, for example, and then showing it again in their usual package to what probably would still be the bigger audience. Indeed, I could imagine events for which I would watch both.
I suspect the real motivation for NBC is not financial, but editorial; they want to control and shape how the US audience experiences the unfolding of the story of these sports, which tend to be sports in which American athletes are competitive, and in which American audiences are most interested. Ultimately of course this is financial - if Americans began to suspect that the real Olympic narrative is not really about scrappy Americans making their dreams come true by triumphing over foreigners, fewer of them might watch the Olympics at all. On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 8:27 PM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: > The thing that bothers me more and more as time goes on and social media > becomes more ubiquitous is that I can see people commenting on events that > are airing live on the BBC and CBC but won't air on NBC until prime time. I > don't object to the concept of prime time being a heavily-edited > compilation of the most TV-friendly events but I wish they didn't hold back > on airing those events live when they aren't in prime time, especially > since the online streams are somewhat difficult to find and navigate when > all of a day's events in a single sport are lumped together into a single > hours-long video. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
