It took him a few days (he told me he was waiting to see how MSNBC handled the big hockey games on Sunday), but he finally responded to the points I made last week about NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. Here’s what he has to say:
It’s hard to compare the coverage of an Olympics in a US friendly timezone to those in an unfriendly one (like London) or a really unfriendly one like Sochi or Beijing. But one thing that can be compared is the online coverage. Why did NBC reduce it’s live online coverage of events to only the hockey and curling? I think it was on Dan Levy’s podcast that I heard someone say that NBC delays and embargos primetime events because not only does it work (and ratings this week indicate that it clearly does) but that it’s the only way they know. The problem isn’t that they’re showing things on tape, the problem is that they’re only showing things on tape.
There was a great point made on this week’s Slate sports podcast, Hang Up And Listen, about this. As somebody (I think it was June Thomas) suggested, it’s about NBC trying to control the narrative. Since they have the features already made, they have to build the coverage around it. And, they said, it also explains the popularity of curling during the Games, because they’re shown from start-to-finish (give or take the opening stones of an end, and an occasional break mid-end).
I completely understand showing premier events that are hard to package live such as alpine skiing on tape, but why not offer the option to fans to watch it live either on cable or on the internet? The answer is, that NBC simply is happy doing to way they always have and that NBC simply doesn’t understand young sports fans.
Again, I fully agree that the Games should be shown live and on demand over the Internet. In case you didn’t see it in the comments, I found a CBS News blog post from 2006 which outlines NBC’s draconian rules regarding their exclusive rights. So it comes down to the question of whether or not streaming video online qualifies as a broadcast. NBC apparently does. I can’t fault NBC for doing everything in its power to protect its massive investment in the Games. It’s just unfortunate that the manner that, most likely, maximizes their ROI does not lead to optimal viewing for sports fans. The only thing I can fault them for is showing the primetime coverage on tape delay in the Pacific Time Zone, where the Games are taking place. That’s beyond stupid.
NBC views its Olympic audience in two primary batches. Here they are:
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- This first group are what they perceive to be sports fans. They believe these fans to pretty much be the over-40, right-wing leaning, beer-swilling couch dwellers that they program football towards. All those ads where the guy chooses the beer over the women? That’s who they think this is. They believe these fans won’t watch the Olympics because it’s not football, they won’t watch women’s sports, and there are too many foreigners around. Pretty much, NBC thinks all sports fans are Norman Chad.
- Because NBC doesn’t think a sports fan audience exists for the Olympics, they instead program primetime coverage towards a second audience, one I call “stirrup pant-wearing 44-year old women from Tulsa.” NBC loves this audience. This is Jay Leno’s audience. This audience wants cheap non-challenging laughs, along with smiling, happy, non-threatening and preferably caucasian American winners being interviewed by a smiling, happy, non-threatening caucasian host and when figure skating or gymnastics roll around, they want a version of American Idol with flags. This is the audience that NBC programs its Olympics coverage towards.
You’ve just described a large percentage of the American public, and then you wonder why politicians refer to us East Coast liberals as being out of touch with the common folk. This goes back to what I wrote in the first piece. You can’t throw a couple of billion down and devote two weeks of prime time saturation coverage and not try to bring in the biggest possible audience.
But you’re also ignoring that they’re showing sports like snowboarding and short track – which have a young demographic – in primetime.
And there’s no need to bring race into this.
But there’s a third audience out there that NBC just totally ignores. This audience is made up of younger sports fans, ones reared on a diet of live sports, instantanous results, international play, and blogging. This younger audience, the one commenting on Deadspin, the one buying Bill Simmons’ books, the one tweeting during live games is the one that NBC simply ignores. NBC either doesn’t know it exists or more likely, just doesn’t care to change its coverage away from an old 80’s/90’s template that has worked in the past.
This audience is the audience that craves live coverage because anything else is an insult to our intelligence. This younger audience spends its time in a borderless world where the web and social media make taped delayed coverage impossible because we’re always going to find out the results. It’s this audience who keeps a webcast on at work, or who works from home with a TV on at the background, or who has a Blackberry with a slingbox feed playing on his desk that NBC simply doesn’t believe exists. They’d rather go with the aformentioned stirrup pant wearers who think that Twitter is a naughty euphemism for sex.
Or maybe it just hasn’t found a way to monetize this demographic, which is tricky given that it’s a generation that has grown up thinking that everything should be free.
Finally, the fact the 1980 Miracle on Ice was televised on tape means absolutely nothing today. Today, any one of us can turn on our TV or boot up our PC and watch nearly every televised sporting event in the world live and then watch it again on-demand once it’s concluded. That wasn’t possible in 1980. It wasn’t concievable in 1980. It’s as relevant to the current debate on NBC’s Olympic coverage as is compare Benz’s Patent Motorwagen in today’s debate on Toyota’s safety.
I agree, but you’re the one who brought up ABC’s history with the Olympics. None of the things you suggest were conceivable when ABC last had the Games.
Even if NBC doesn’t want to interrupt MSNBC or CNBC’s afternoon schedule of screaming morons,
I’d like to see the US curling teams and CNBC’s hosts switch places. I don’t think they could do worse than the other.
they could still put live coverage of big events online, where most of the people who want to watch it live would have no problem finding it. Then, they could target ads specifically to this audience rather than stirrup pant wearers they adore so dear. But that would require a bit of intelligence, something that we all know NBC has very little of up and down its network management chain.
Again, see my point about whether or not showing the Games online nullifies their exclusive rights. I believe it all comes down to that. I would like NBC to publicly state if this is preventing complete online coverage.
And then Aaron finally moves to how ABC/ESPN could cover the Games.
I disagree here and I think ESPN could do a good job with the Olympics. For all the Stuart Scotts and Chris Bermans there are really talented “heads” like Mike Tirico, Chris Fowler, Bob Ley, Rece Davis, Karl Ravech, Steve Levy, Sage Steele, Trey Wingo and on and on. It’s easy to only remember the idiots, but ESPN has lots of really talented people there. Also, who’s to say that ESPN can’t just go pluck Costas for the Olympics. Costas isn’t the problem. If not Costas, I’d pick Fowler to be the new face of the Olympics.
But you know they’d go with Berman.
ESPN does understand this younger audience. They have shows like PTI that have appealed to this demo for a long time. They’ve understood the extreme sports audience the IOC wants since before practically anyone else in sports media.
And NBC, by showing short track and snowboarding in primetime, doesn’t cater to this audience?
The fact is that ABC, like NBC, is a huge multimedia conglomerate. And in corporate America, what works for one will be copied by the others until we all get sick of it. You only need to look at their regular broadcast schedule to know how this is the case. The Cosby show is successful? Let’s give every other stand-up their own sitcom! People like formulaic crime dramas? Lets franchise them! Reality shows? They eat that stuff up, and, as a bonus, they’re cheap, union-busters, too! So if you think that anything is going to change with the Games on ABC/ESPN, remember that they’re owned by a corporation that wrote the book on watering down entertainment for mainstream America.
In the end, it comes down to this. Why is it that in 2010, when the rest of the world is watching live coverage of the Olympics on their TVs, mobiles, and PCs, Americans must wait and watch it spoonfed to us by an affable host in bitesized chunks later that night?
Is the rest of the world’s television industry as ratings-and-advertising driven as ours is? If you want to say that the four main networks are too big and should be broken up so that they can focus on entertainment and information, I’m right there with you. But that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen. The only way to change Olympic coverage is to not watch, talk about, blog, or tweet them.
