I’ve struggled mightily to understand why NBC prefers to tape events and repackage them for a delayed broadcast as if the sports themselves are not inherently interesting to watch. NBCOlympics.com, like every other site in the world, reports major Olympic headlines and live results, but then turns around 12-15 hours later and pretends in their primetime broadcast that the audience is clueless. Suddenly it occurred to me: we are.
Americans are valuable fans to the Olympic Movement. NBC paid $900 million for the rights to broadcast the Olympics exclusively. That is many hundreds of millions of dollars more than any other country’s network. The television audience in the United States is so influential that the swimming, gymnastics, basketball and beach volleyball schedules were designed so that these events could be shown live in primetime in the US. But for all of our money and influence, we remain woefully mindless and uneducated when it comes to watching the Olympics? And NBC is the sole beneficiary.
Americans would never tolerate having to watch football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, hockey, golf or tennis shown in tape delay. Even matches in the World Cup soccer tournament and stages of the Tour de France are shown live, even if they are later re-aired to accommodate for the time difference between continents. During the NFL season, if you don’t like Fox’s pre-game show, you switch over to CBS or ESPN. Or you get Direct TV or watch online. With the Olympics we demonstrate no such conviction as fans. When NBC says it’s time to watch beach volleyball, we say “Okay, where do I sit?”
NBC is treating Beijing like the set of a reality TV show, editing storylines and compressing hundreds of hours of live action into four falsely sensationalized tape-delayed hours each night. And they’re achieving the best ratings ever. The message is clear: Americans aren’t educated enough about Olympic sports to appreciate the drama of a live Olympic event; and so, like everything else in our mainstream media, the bar is lowered to the level of the uninitiated masses. Network TV’s oldest rule is enforced: the broadcast must appeal to the dumbest segment of the audience.
American’s are in fact exceptional sports fans. We are the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA finals, March Madness, the Stanley Cup and every sold out regular season game in between. We are the Red Sox versus the Yankees, Michigan versus Ohio State. We are ESPN and ESPN2 and ESPN3 and ESPNClassics. We are Outsports. In the summer we watch hundreds of laps of car racing, eighteen holes of golf four days in a row, nine innings of baseball day after day after day. All of live, of course. In the fall we crunch baseball stats while watching Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football after already watching a Saturday and Sunday full of professional and college football. So, no, I’m not questioning our natural ability when it comes to fandom. We just don’t apply that same American tradition to the Olympics.
A sports fan must be passionate and invested. He can be skeptical, critical, bitter, biased, frustrated, exuberant or disappointed. If you’re a Cubs fan you don’t give up on baseball just because you haven’t celebrated a World Series title in your lifetime.
But how many Phelps fans watched a swim race between 2004 and 2008? How many Americans knew of Nastia Liukin or Shawn Johnson before NBC told you two weeks ago that they were the ones to watch? The fact is, we’re neither swim fans nor gymnastics fans. And we make pretty lousy Track & Field fans, rowing fans, indoor volleyball fans, and triathlon fans, too. We ignore these sports for 3 years and 50 weeks and then we tune in fully expecting to win medals in every one of them. When we do win, we’re eager to claim ownership and feel nationalistic pride. We become Facebook friends with Michael Phelps. We pound our chest at the medal count. When we don’t win, we write off the sport as stupid. This behavior is reinforced by NBC, which has a strong tendency to show only the sports where Americans are dominant, while editing out all the others. Did I mention they’re posting record ratings?
In other countries, athletes of Olympic sports are superstars not just for two weeks every four years, but year-round. Paula Radcliff, the British marathon runner, has won popularity contests against David Beckham; tabloids hound Chinese divers like Guo Jingjing; and Ian Thorpe enjoyed Phelpsian levels of celebrity in Australia — over his entire career, not just for two overkill weeks like the ones we’ve seen here where NBC has focused on Phelps as if he’s going out of style (because he is going out of style, just as soon as the Olympics end and America’s “real” sports resume their place in the limelight).
When the now-familiar format of commercialized, story-driven broadcasts were first introduced around the time of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, it was revolutionary. Ratings went nuts and Olympic fever spread into new segments of the population. The influx of cash into the Olympic Movement ensured its place in contemporary culture and made it viable for decades to come. But now the technology has changed and every single Olympic event could be shown live on demand online, offering even more areas to collect ad revenue. In contrast, the closely scripted, tape-delayed broadcast that NBC delivers in primetime feels like isolationist propaganda compared to what the rest of the world is watching. And I think it’s going to come back to bite us.
How will the United States ever compete with China in sports like diving or badminton if our youngsters are exposed only to beach volleyball and swimming? How will we compete with African nations in distance running if we only learn the storylines of American sprinters? America is paying more than its fair share in TV rights, and we’re harming our own Olympic futures in the process.
I will end by saying that NBC’s coverage of these Olympics has far surpassed any previous Olympics in flexibility and sheer volume. Really, I shouldn’t complain. In fact, maybe I’m not complaining, but instead pointing out that we can do better. We are a diverse and populous nation. There is room to be passionate and educated about Olympic sports in addition to the sports we already obsess over. If the United States has any interest in remaining dominant on the Olympic stage, we need to observe the Olympics not like a reality show, but as they really are: a complex and inspiring human phenomenon. (And, please, can we do it live.)
By Ryan Quinn
25 responses so far ↓
1 Jim Buzinski // Aug 20, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Couldn’t have said it better. Most Americans don’t care about the majority of Olympic events expect every four years, hence there is little push.
Interesting that the men’s gold medal basketball game starts at 2:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday, yet NBC is set to show it live. Why can’t do the same with other big events instead of showing the 100 meters on a 12-hour delay.
2 Cyd Zeigler jr. // Aug 20, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Eh. I think this is overstating it. I wonder how many countries have four (five, if you include Telemundo) networks airing Olympics events. Probably just one: The United States.
And if the NFL played games at 3am, you bet the public wouldn’t mind it being on tape delay; in fact, I’d personally prefer it!
3 Jeanne // Aug 20, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I wonder how many countries have four (five, if you include Telemundo) networks airing Olympics events. Probably just one: The United States.
Or not. In Germany the national television has all the rights to the olympics. We get the major and most important competitions + the ones with medal chances for Germany on one of the two first national channels.
Then we have 4 other channels, also from the national television. These broadcast the other competitions, e.g. synchronised swimming, diving, table tennis, preliminary rounds of canoeing etc. For example when the gymnastics finals took place we got the ones with German participation on the major channel - but you could watch the entire competition live (and of course without commercials) on one of the minor channels.
And we also have Eurosport, which is broadcasting 24 hours everyday and always includes every decision (when there is track&field but there is a decision in Taekwondo - they zap over to Taekwondo). But Eurosport has commercials which is highly annoying - so I mostly watch the national channels.
4 Patricia Nell Warren // Aug 20, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Right now, it is 4:27 a.m. local time, Thursday in Beijing, and 1:27 p.m. Wednesday here in L.A. The unavoidable problem with the Olympics is that they are often held in a part of the world where competitions don’t necessarily happen at a time of day that’s convenient for live viewing in the U.S. So we American viewers will have to live with tape delays if we’re going to see anything. Or else we have to be willing to get up in the middle of the night to see certain events live.The only way around this, that I can see, is for the Games and the media to agree on an embargo of any news release on results until the tape delays have been seen in the U.S.. And I’m not sure how that could be policed.
5 Jim Buzinski // Aug 20, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Many countries have more than 1 channel, but they all do one thing NBC refuses to:
THEY SHOW SPORTS LIVE!! Gee, what a concept!
Nothing would prevent NBC from showing T&F events live, then using the primetime broadcast to repackage them. Then they would satisfy everyone.
It is frustrating that Americans each Games see less live coverage than any nation on Earth. And NBC online will NOT show live T&F events that are slated for prime time broadcast.
Wish I knew how to find an international feed somewhere on the Web.
6 Paul // Aug 20, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Don’t blame the time zone difference for appalling broadcasting - here in Australia we’re just 3 hours ahead (or the same time zone as Beijing if you’re in Perth) and STILL they don’t show some events live - they wait to package them up (and dumb them down) with crappy pop songs and super slo-mo mashes. Then show them over and over and over again. ‘Live’ loses any relevance.
And, like the US, sports are simply ignored if there’s no Aussie or big star taking part. Or they show the heats with the Aussies, but not the final if we don’t make it… So, we’ve seen endless hours hours of swimming heats, but no wrestling (damn!).
But most annoying is their inability to use new technology. The broadcaster has 3 digital channels but all 3 show the same thing! WTF?! How about 3 different feeds on 3 channels, with a third less adds?!
I too would like to find international feeds, but I recjkon they’ll be hard to find cos the IOC values local broadcasters too highly.
7 runiteking1 // Aug 20, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I agree with eerything you aid in your article, I’m a high schooler and from my obersvations, most kids suddenly becomes experts in gymnastic and says how basketball is “quote” a superior sport compared to sports such as pingpong…
8 Patricia Nell Warren // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Most, if not all, of the Beijing sports are videocast live on http://www.nbcolympics.com. If you maximize the image, you get action on your whole computer screen. And it’s real time too…meaning you get all the ho-hum intervals between competitors, or between end of game and medals ceremony.
9 Patricia Nell Warren // Aug 20, 2008 at 11:49 pm
For instance, the live videocast of the men’s 10K just concluded at nbcolympics.com. (The American swimmer won, BTW.) Other sports that are “live” at this very moment are wrestling, table tennis, field hockey, modern pentathlon and taekwondo.
10 Kirk // Aug 21, 2008 at 12:20 am
One of the benefits of working at a TV station (not an NBC affiliate) is that we have TVs at our desk. During the day here on the East Coast, there are, of course, no live Olympics happening, so I can’t make comparison as far as that’s concerned. But when NBC and affiliates break away for a few hours from coverage, I can turn it over to the CBC station and catch Olympics coverage (although it’s in French).And the sports they highlight are the sports with Canadians competing in them. Every single sport is one in which a Canadian athlete or team is playing. Now, they will also show some matches without Canadians in them, but it’s certainly no more than you see on the NBC stations, and probably quite less, if only because they’re trying to wrap up a full day’s coverage for their audience in a space of several hours.So, the U.S. may not be unique in this. Also, as Patricia and others have pointed out, we actually have tremendous access to a much broader range of Olympic sports than ever before. Throughout the NBC network of stations, you can catch a lot of sports on TV, live or not. And the Web site, as long as you don’t have a pre-Intel Mac, will show you nearly all the sports. It’s incredibly impressive and provides a way of showing the sports that has never been possible before and will never be possible strictly on television.So I think the complaint is a bit overblown. There is a point to be made that a lot of the sports don’t get attention from the vast majority of American sports fans during non-Olympics years. But the writer also makes the point that we’re intense fans of quite a few sports already. I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect any country to vastly expand its rooting interest much beyond the core sports it already spends so much time on. For Americans, it’s basically the major pro sports. For other countries, it might be soccer, cricket and track. There’s only so much one group of people can support!
11 Kirk // Aug 21, 2008 at 12:21 am
Ugh. Forgive my lack of paragraphs. Commenting tool’s not registering my breaks…
12 Patricia Nell Warren // Aug 21, 2008 at 12:25 am
Yikes…I misread the video screen. The men’s 10K open water was won by Maarten van der Weijden. The American placed 8th.
13 Nicholas // Aug 21, 2008 at 1:19 am
I wonder how many countries have four (five, if you include Telemundo) networks airing Olympics events. Probably just one: The United States.
Haha, really? Need I say anything about the Chinese coverage of the Olympics?
14 Michael in New York // Aug 21, 2008 at 3:46 am
I certainly love watching events live online or on cable channels but I’m already losing lots of sleep and staying up til 5 am every day and there’s far more coverage than I could ever consume. So I don’t quite mind having NBC package the most popular events in primetime, especially when it’s often live, as in the women’s volleyball match I just watched. Besides, who watches “live” anymore? I get home at 10 pm. and then start crashing through commercials, just iike I do w Yankee games. But NBC should do both even for the premiere games: package them in primetime and show them online as well. They’ll only gain eyeballs. I do agree with one big point: since events like gymnastics and swimming and diving and wrestling can be huge draws two weeks every four years, surely they could at least be solid cable draws for the other three years and 50 weeks that the Olympics arent on. If I can watch bullriding every weekend (and I do), I should be able to watch gymnastics and swimming meets as well. But of course all we ever get are the annual final meets or world events on taped delays often days or even a WEEK or more later. Forget the Olympic spirit, I’m convinced they’re leaving lots of money on the table just waiting for the network that will package those sports properly and regularly.
P.S. Is that THE Patricia Nell Warren? Well, hey!
15 Jim Buzinski // Aug 21, 2008 at 3:51 am
Yep, it is the one and only Patricia Nell Warren, who has done a tremendous job blogging for us.
16 studd // Aug 21, 2008 at 4:32 am
In the UK the BBC does the same thing, its all about Team GB. With Sky you can get lots of sports even NASCAR during the Olympics.
17 Ryan Quinn // Aug 21, 2008 at 9:06 am
The live events available at nbcolympics.com are fantastic. They are perfect. The triathlon coverage was great. The four screen thing is great. But why no Track & Field, diving, swimming, gymnastics, etc? There is no way NBC would lose viewers for the primetime broadcast if they offered the events live online. They’re already announcing the results online before primetime anyway! AND, they would get more traffic on their web site, and thus more ad revenue. I don’t see the motivation for not making these events viewable live online. (other than to drive me insane)
18 Patricia Nell Warren // Aug 21, 2008 at 9:08 am
I’m noting Kirk’s comment about the CBC coverage. CBC must do a better job with its French-language coverage than with English-language coverage. My anglophone Canadian friends have complained about the skimpiness of CBC coverage of the Games.
19 tom white // Aug 21, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I do think this year has improved the coverage of the olympic sports. I don’t enjoy most of the major American sports (baseball, basketball, football) all that much. Therefore, I’ve always liked the Olympics when you get to see badminton, fencing, open water swimming, etc. I’ve watched quite a bit of that this year. yes, I am staying up until 4am to do it, but I get to see it.
Unfortunately, I do have to agree that the primary networks in the US cause us to miss out on these sports the rest of the time. I find some of it at weird hours on unexpected channels (bull riding, judo, and some others), but certainly nothing that I can depend on. Thankfully, the tennis channel covers my primary sport pretty well, but even that isn’t as good as I’d like. Where’s the nationals of lawn tennis, handball, etc?
tom
20 Charlie Carson // Aug 21, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Ryan’s correct that ABC is credited with changing the way the Olympics has been packaged — Roone Arledge is always cited for the “Up Close and Personal” segments that really did get increasingly annoying in1984.
I had the good fortune to work on the Atlanta staff in 1996 and was able to watch various countries’ feeds and they all invariably focused on their own athletes — but that didn’t really surprise me. Twenty years earlier (in college…sigh), I went to Montreal and stayed in a hostel just south of the city. I’ll always remember one night when I didn’t have any tickets watching the communal TV. The Canadians staying there were in hysterics about how their local announcers would always try to keep the viewers’ interest before commercial breaks by saying, “And when we come back, [Jane Smith] begins her quest for Olympic gold!” — especially when Jane was ranked 34th in her sport.
Since they began showing more real-time sports on cable in 1992, I haven’t minded the packaged sports in prime time. But I wish we had a bit more prime time variety. I know NBC felt like they “needed” to show the early rounds of Misty May and Dalhausser so that we were programmed to “care” about them more in case they made the medal rounds (which they did) — but it also made me sick to death of them.
I also realized last night as I was watching two people play ping pong at 3 a.m. that I must be insane.
21 rockaby // Aug 21, 2008 at 4:18 pm
There seems to be a few issues here. I don’t think Americans are that different from the rest of us. Here in Britain we may be celebrating our medals in rowing, cycling and sailing, but there is no real interest in them as spectator sports. Well have you tried watching them? It’s really dull and, as far as sailing is concerned, impossible to follow what’s happening. Too often the Olympic events are utterly predictable anyway. Just give Phelps the Gold and why bother with the race.For us, the overwhelmingly popular sport is football (soccer to you Yanks) and people will get more entertainment from it as well as cricket, rugby and other team sports which have more drama and interest, I’m English, I’ve paid to see the Red Sox play and enjoyed it, but I could never imagine spending money to see our cyclists even if they are the best. In fact I haven’t even switched on the TV to see them. On the issue of TV coverage, I appreciate that NBC will be playing lots for the rights to the London Olympics in 2012 as far too many of my taxes will be wasted on them anyway. But is it a little arrogant to assume that schedules should work around your time zone? Maybe one billion Chinese would like to see the sports in peak time? That said, come August 2012, I’ll try and find something decent to watch rather than Graeco-Roman suppressed homeroticism or the synchronised stupidity.
22 Charlie Carson // Aug 21, 2008 at 4:42 pm
I have one thing to correct and another to add.
“Commercial” breaks may have been the wrong way to put it (does the CBC show commercials?). Station breaks? News breaks? Anyway…
The televised athlete bios began at least as early as 1972, if not also 1968. The late Mark Chatfield, who finished 4th in the 100 m. breastroke in Munich, was profiled by ABC in a piece that focused on his cello playing. Mark laughed that the way they focused on his “artistic” side was perhaps only fully appreciated later among those of us in his generation who were getting the gay teams going (he swam for West Hollywood Aquatics for more than 10 years).
The difference by 1984 was that it seemed ABC put a premium on an athlete’s sickest relative or some personal tragedy that had been overcome and allegedly provided the inspiration for sport success.
23 ger // Aug 22, 2008 at 2:31 am
Patricia, I’m not quite sure what your anglophone Canadian friends are talking about. At minimum, the CBC airs 3 segments per day. The first is from 3 AM PDT to 9 AM PDT (that’s until midnight Beijing time). Then they start up again at 3 PM PDT and run until 9 PM. After a 5 minute news break, they’re back on until at least midnight, when TSN takes over until 3 AM. Then it’s back to the CBC for the 3 AM to 9 AM block. Tonight, however, CBC is going straight through until 9 AM.In addition, when there are multiple events happening at once, the CBC adds 2 more of its channels into the mix (Bold & Newsworld). The only time there’s no Olympic coverage is from 9 AM to 3 PM PDT, which just happens to be midnight to 6 AM Beijing time. This means that they broadcast live all the time.I’m watching the US play Russia in men’s volley ball right now. I’m really happy I was able to watch Usain Bolt win both his medals in real time, in HD (not streaming live on my MacBook). While the CBC announcers can be a little annoying, from what I can tell that’s a universal problem.
24 badfan // Aug 22, 2008 at 7:36 pm
ABC may have overused their ‘Up Close & Personal’ segments but they implemented them wisely e.g. in the middle of a 12 min Long Track Speedskating race. At least they didn’t prove their bad time management by cutting away mid diving round to show beach volleyball ‘LIVE!!!’ even though the formerhad concluded many hours earlier.
ABC blazed a trail with their much missed ‘Wide World of Sports’ which gave an entire generation a chance to root for Vasily Alekseyev in the 70s and watch sports like ski jumping, lumberjacking or table tennis with regularity year after year. Now my ABC affiliate broadcasts hours of infomercials on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. ESPN was supposed to take over the mantle in broadcasting obscure sports but despite their numerous channels they have merely robbed the ‘major’ sports from the Networks.
I must commend NBC for working together to give Olympics lovers more access than ever before to this Olympics via nbcolympics.com live feeds and rewinds (I got to watch Prelim Qualifying rounds for Shot Put and Hammer Throw!!! NBC Primetime showed 2 min worth).
I don’t know about other people’s cable/dish systems but in addition to the 5 NBC stations, AT&T Uverse includes HDNet, a channel exclusively for Basketball, one for Soccer and TWO international channels (Mandarin and Korean) which focus on their athletes and interests.
As a result I’ve watched very little of the primetime NBC shows live, choosing to let the DVR record them so I can fast forward through the numerous in studio ‘how did you feel?’ interviews - Bela Karolyi needs closed captioning.
I simply hook up a pc/laptop to my flat screen and watch the onlympics.com feed in full 50″ glory. It is far preferable to hear only crowd noises than listen to Al Trautwig make another lame comment about a “China Syndrome….and it’s called China GOLD!!!!”
With all the options available this Olympics I feel sorry for those who are stuck in an NBC Primetime Rut. They are truly missing out on much of the drama that played out everywhere - Jason Turner dropping out of the Bronze with his last shot in Air Pistol, having a tiebreaker with the other US competitor then later getting the bronze again after a Korean DQ. Korea losing Gold in Archery, a sport that they Dominated like the US used to dominate sprints. I would rather know how a badminton crazy country like Indonesia deals with a surprise bronze and a shocking loss for silver than the stunned reactions of overblown US sprinters at not living up to their strutting and chest thumping attitudes.
25 Kirk // Aug 23, 2008 at 3:23 am
Patricia! Yeah, I can’t comment on the English version of coverage, since I only have the French-Canadian broadcast available. But I should reiterate that it is an off-hours coverage show. It does last several hours, though, so they can recap a ton of events, even if it is with a Canadian-centric focus, and it trims out some down time. I’m glad to be able to see some taekwondo events!
But it may be that the English version is different. Pure speculation, but does the CBC on English channels have more programming it has to squeeze in? Maybe, like NBC (which has to squeeze in Days of Our Lives) English CBC has other obligations. Perhaps a reason, but doesn’t do much for fans. NBCOlympics.com and similar sites may still be the way to go.
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