Olympics Opening Ceremonies Tape Delay by NBC Faces End Run by Online Fans

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times

NBC, which owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, spent most of Friday trying to keep it that way. NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant....

***

Most of the world’s other broadcasters with rights to the Olympics, including CBC in Canada, Televisa in Mexico, the BBC in Britain and NHK in Japan, broadcast the opening ceremonies live on television. “The idea of watching a 14-hour delay is repulsive,” remarked Tracy Record, a blogger in Seattle, who woke up at 5 a.m. to watch the opening ceremonies with her 12-year-old son on CBC....

Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, said in a statement: “We have a billion dollars worth of revenue at stake here, so that means we’re not public television, for better or worse.”...

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/sports/olympics/09nbc.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[Bob Dobbs]

1. Olympic American broadcast is propaganda for GE, Military Information Complex.

And an image makeover for Chinese fascism, our new world overlords.

I like the sports part of it, however.

[ikojo]

2. the Olympics have long been about

propaganda in the guise of sports.

[City Lights]

3. Suck on it, NBC.

I hope you lose your billion.

[SemperEadem]

4. Well now, GE/NBC

you now realize just how irrelevant you are.

[onehandle]

5. It's a 24 hour world. Things should happen when they happen.

They should have shown them live and then showed a repeat in prime time.

[raystorm7]

6. NBC is retarded, it was so damn easy to get a quality feed to the ceremony online as it happened :)

[natrat]

7. fuck nbc

[bulloney]

8. They ran into the same problems when they were in Sydney and Athens.

When the Olympics are a half-world away, you can't show the events live here, unless you make the athletes compete at some ridiculous early morning hour at the Olympics site. Couple that with Internet, satellite and other media accessible to many people here, your coverage of the Olympics has all of the suspense of waiting for paint to dry.

[anakie]

9. but this time they have bowed to NBC pressure

to change the timing of some of the events in Beijing. Swimming finals for instance, at the suggestion of NBC for the first time in my 40 odd years of watching swimming the finals are being held in the morning Chinese time in order to fit a live prime time coverage in the states. Money has always talked with the IOC.

Peace

[ticapnews]

10. Here's a wacky idea

NBC should have taken into account the time difference when bidding on the games. They could have adjusted their bid to fit the schedule, and charge advertisers accordingly for day time broadcasts. They could then run repeat programming at night, since the vast majority of Americans will not have the ability to watch live during the day.

As usual, large corporations are unable to adapt their business models to the changing times and must instead resort to legal strong-arm tactics to attempt to maintain the status quo.

[Doctor Cynic]

11. Better yet, the Chinese Government should tell NBC to suck it.

[girl gone mad]

12. From a business perspective, it would have made more sense.

Those early viewers would be free walking advertisements for the prime time airing.

[JI7]

13. they are too much of assholes to even considering something

that might cut the revenue down by even a few dollars. they really fucked up with not airing it live.