During the first full day of competition at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, NBC had plenty of opportunities to show live action. On this Saturday night, there were plenty of events from which to choose. CNBC had the Slovakia-Canada women’s hockey game. NBC had men’s luge, Short Track Speedskating and Women’s Moguls skiing. However, NBC decided to tape delay the first runs of the luge competition even though there was a compelling storyline in the wake of the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili.
Even when NBC was promoting live coverage of the men’s 1,500 meter Short Track Speedskating event, it chose to delay the last heat with American J.R. Celski so it fit an extra commercial into coverage. How did I know the last heat was delayed? I found out on Twitter as reporters covering Short Track put the results online.
It’s factors like these that make NBC’s coverage maddening to the viewer. In addition, there was women’s Short Track Speedskating, however, NBC did not tell us anything that was going on as that was held for late night coverage. And the qualifying run for the Moguls? Delayed.
NBC did partially redeem itself by getting to the finals of the men’s 1,500 meters with Apolo Anton Ohno winning silver and Celski taking the bronze after a wild crash and the finish of moguls where Hannah Kearney of the United States won the gold and showing them live in the Eastern and Central time zones. However, NBC finished off its coverage by once again showing taped coverage of the 2nd men’s luge run and taped interviews with the latest U.S. medal winners causing the network to run past its scheduled 11:30 p.m. sign off time by 26 minutes.
One can argue the tape delay was done to keep NBC’s coverage moving and to ensure that there were not any dead spots in between events. However, by holding events while people can check NBCOlympics.com or CTVOlympics.com to see real-time results, it’s really doing a disservice to the viewer.
And we can go over how NBC continues to gyp the Mountain and Pacific time zones by completely delaying primetime coverage by three hours, but that’s a story for another day.
By holding onto the outdated network TV model and refusing to show events as they happen, NBC is making viewers yearn for other outlets like ESPN, Fox or even CBS to take the next batch of games in 2014/2016 in hopes they can do better. Holding events for later broadcast or to squeeze extra commercials shows the arrogance of a network that believes its way is the only way. It’s not and it’s driving viewers crazy. Two days down and 15 to go. This isn’t the way to start if you’re the networks of NBC.
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