Watching the Olympics: it's just not the same

When NBC purchased the exclusive right to broadcast the Olympics, they planned on using new technology to show over 36,000 hours of unprecedented coverage. Inserting live coverage of selected events in primetime slots, they also offer taped TV coverage, videos on their site and the ability to download onto Vista computers. Since the last Olympics, the changes in technology opened up new possibilities never before used.

But with the changes have come criticisms of some of their decisions: a delayed showing of the Opening ceremonies by 12 hours and going after YouTube and other sites for posting videos of events prior to TV coverage. A viewing audience that appears to be more attuned to internet viewing than ever before, doesn't seem to be satisfied even with features that allow downloading of events overnight to be watched in the morning.

NBC's decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremony by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC's technological wall – by finding news feeds 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.
via seattlepi.nwsource.com

In a world where YouTube rules and is available on cell phones, laptops, and other mobile devices, it's hard for TV coverage to compete. News is now delivered in shorter pieces, pared down to highlights of events the viewer chooses, rather than content chosen by a network, interspersed with stories about the athletes, their parents and other Olympic venue news and views.

It's no wonder that in this kind of media environment, viewers aren't satisfied with watching taped performances of outcomes they've already seen scrolled across their iPhones or Blackberries when they get home from work. Nor is it surprising that bloggers, whose numbers have grown geometrically since the last Olympics, are posting videos.

It's all just another sign that the more traditional media outlets are lagging behind. They still have a TV audience, folks who want to know that they can see taped portions of an Opening Ceremony in primetime, but by the next Olympics, more of that audience too will have converted to new ways of watching sports, news and current events.

It's time for networks to embrace the reality - and not a bad one -that watching the Olympics will never be the same again.