The simple reason is that the Olympic Committee has sold television rights to a limited number of companies. If NBC Sports is one of those companies, then they have to satisfy not only the American audiences, but also audiences in other countries. If they use customary units, no other countries will buy the rights from NBC - they will go elsewhere. If NBC have not bought the rights to film in the Olympic stadium, then they have got to buy the rights to transmit from a company that has the rights and since that company is transmitting to a world-wide audience, they are using units of measure that are used world-wide.
In short, NBC is operating in a world-wide market, not a US-specific market. -----Original Message----- From: USMA <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: 25 July 2021 03:20 To: USMA List Server <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA 1748] Olympics Are More Metric than Ever My theory is that too much is going on too fast in the news, not just of the Olympics, for commentators to convert, so they just leave the values from the international feed in metric units. Furthermore, I think that Americans as a whole are becoming more comfortable with metric units. Many sports (swimming, diving, track, etc.) use them even here in the United States. Finally, the U.S. is being swamped by international media, which come to us from the large number of internet and cable channels. I caught this complaint on one site: "Why are the Olympics players' info in the metric system? I'm watching the volleyball replay, and they are showing players' info in meters: so and so is 1.98 meters tall. I thought NBC Sports was an American channel. I don't want to do math." To this luddite, I say: Don't do math. Think in metric! You'll be surprise how quickly you forget the complicated legacy units. _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
