I love the Olympics. I love the opening ceremonies. I love the competition and the drama. Not so much in 2012.
It started wrong with the Opening Ceremonies
Danny Boyle put together a London 2012 Olympics Ceremony that was a movie with a beautiful soundtrack, a compelling set of stories, and 40,000 extras who volunteered their time to create something amazing. He was competing against a Beijing Olympics Opening, and he did it with content. He went through a history of the British Isles, brought in stars to solidify the production, created a love story and then directly integrated social media into the production.
Why did this all go wrong in the US on NBC? Easy answer. Don’t you hate it when people talk all through an entire movie?
Yeah painful. I have nothing personally against the lovely Merideth Viera or the been-there-too-long-on-Today Matt Laurer, but if they already watched this multiple times and wanted to ruin the “movie” rest for us, then they did. At the Alamo Drafthouse they would have been thrown out.
I tried switching to my over the air antenna tuner, and then I swapped to SAP, but no use since Viera and Laurer kept on ruining the movie. I couldn’t even enjoy the amazing musical selection. OK, so I then switched to the Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC), but they lost out on the Olympics bid this year in Canada, so still no solution.
The only good thing about the time delay was by the time the production was ongoing in the West Coast, friends to the East had already figured out that on a multi-channel receiver that by killing the center channel, the insane dribbling would be 95% muted. Gold star to Omar Gallaga who sent me that solution!
When should they have been speaking?
Talk all you want during the parade of nations. Tell us more about countries that we have never heard about. Dijbouti, what the? Never heard of them, so please tell us about them. Taiwan, tell us why China continues to oppress them in the Olympics. Mention the controversy over the flag. Do some news.
What’s wrong with time delays?
NBC is likely providing its advertisers with the highest possible viewership by doing time shifting and proper editing of some of the events. This is optimal for ratings and shareholders, but with the instantaneous tranfer of information via the internet and social media channels the thrill is gone. We all know the outcome, so effectively we’re all watching a DVR/TiVO playback where we can not skip the commercials.
What’s wrong with this year’s livestreaming of sports?
This year I picked up the NBA League Pass package to watch Jeremy Lin play with the Knicks. It paid for itself during the first few weeks of Linsanity! What did it provide? A live stream of the complete games with all professional commentary, all changes in camera angles, all replays of amazing action. That’s everything the currently Olympic livestreaming lacks. It’s why the current USA Basketball on livestream is so boring, because it’s generic for a global audience without the NBC commentary.
If I could go back in time and find a NeXT Cube, I would email the President of NBC and tell… oh wait… someone tried that already and got his Twitter account banned. :P
