Warning: This story is meant for our U.S. readers only. As many of you already know, I am giving Olympics the miss and perhaps that is why I am not familiar with the daily coverage on NBC and its online properties. The Olympics apparently have proved to be a bonanza for the company. The Peacock Network CEO Jeff Zucker thinks the viewership number of Olympics prove that network television is still dominant. Mattew Ingram says not so fast, buddy, because Olympics come around once every four years. What about rest of the years… when viewership is declining, because somehow viewers can’t make must-see-TV.
[qi:004] Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be pleased with NBC’s coverage — too many ads, inane and bland commentary and time-delay tactics have got people hopping mad. While Zucker seems to be crowing about how well the Olympics are doing online, Rafat Ali of PaidContent points out that Yahoo’s Olympics section beat out NBCOlympics.com, and sees it as a missed opportunity, thanks to what is described as “bottled excitement.” Russell Beattie, a good friend, pointed out in his typical no-bullshit style that NBC has ruined the Olympics. “What should be a privilege for a national broadcaster has been turned into an extortion racket, holding the Olympics hostage with all of us paying the ransom,” he wrote. NewTeeVee’s Chris Albrecht added, “This could have been a golden moment for online video — too bad NBC just couldn’t stick the landing.”
What grade would you give the NBC coverage, both on TV and on the Internet? Take our poll and leave a comment.
I know this post was for US viewers, but I thought it would be a good time to chime in to say how well I think the BBC are broadcasting the Olympics here in the UK.
Plenty of interactive channels to choose from over satellite and cable, and even 3 extra options on Freeview. The live online streaming video is also impressive. The huge traffic they are getting doesn’t seem to be adversely affecting the service either.
All in all I am impressed so far (and it doesn;t hurt we are doing pretty well in the events as well of course).
I was pleased to see NBC posted the full 3 hours of the Qualification round of the Trampolining, because I’m a former competitive trampolinist, but there is no commetary although I have provided my own in my head but for people who don’t know the rules of the sport or the tricks will be totally lost .My Father is a professional trampoline coach in Australia and he cant access the NBC streams of course but Ill probably screen grab the video and sent it to him.
They should provide a service where you can download the video for a fee from anywhere in the world but I suppose that would mess up the IOC’s revenue stream they milk from selling the Broadcast rights to the highest bidder in as many countries as they can .
Too be perfectly honest, I’ve just been watching things on nbcolympics.com and it’s been great. Sure, you have to wait 15-30 seconds when you first open the video stream to watch a stupid GE ad, but after that it’s clear coverage with no commercials and no commentary. How can you say that’s a bad thing?
NBC has online coverage? I have been going to Yahoo everyday. If only I didn’t have to use Silverlight…
I have been using the NBC Olympics website. It’s difficult to communicate just how bad and horrible the online site is. It takes hours for videos to show up on the site. Why??? I’m reading about Phelps 8th medal on every other news site and it’s 8 hours later before I can view it at NBC.
The video player does not work well and often hiccups and forces you to watch a second ad when you dare to click the “enlarge” button if you want to watch the video in a larger window.
They also offer a customized player for downloading content that is a clusterf*&K of monumental proportions and if i were not a geek would not have been able to get installed. The you download a 2 minute clip of table tennis highlights and they warn you that you can view it for only 2 days! How about longer than 2 days to watch my 2 minute table tennis highlight?
A complete and utter joke and as usual a missed opportunity to make even more money by fully embracing the 24/7 nature of the web.
Proprietary Silverlight. Makes it so I have to run an operating system that THEY want me to run.
Should I…
A. Go out and buy Windows for 300 bucks
B. Not watch the olympics because they can’t seem to provide a standards compliant video stream
I chose B. Many like me also did.
Who needs online coverage when you can fill up your DVR every day with 40 hours of HDTV coverage? That’s more than I can consume.
I only watch recorded material, so I can skip commercials. Since I watch everything delayed anyway, it really does not bother me that NBC does not show all events live.
I just have to stay away from the websites to make sure I don’t know the results before I watch.
Om,
Unquestionably the worst olympic coverage that i’ve witnessed in my entire life. How bad is the coverage:
1. It’s not live though the coverage says “Live”
2. Bob Costas is proof that Jim McKay has no olympics equal (at least none as of yet)
3. NBC commentary is for 5th graders who have already been sent to special learning.
4. NBC hasn’t figured out that ALL of the games have more countries competing than the US, China, Russia, Germany, Australia, the UK, and Canada – and yes it is okay to show more than 3 of them for a given competition.
5. 24 hour television and internet coverage would have been fantastic, but much too complicated for NBC’s narrow minded incompetence.
6. NBC’s consistent inability to recognize that they’re receiving “audience lift” from television viewership in China (the world’s largest market and current olympic host), and will be embarrassed by their drop off for the next olympic games because they won’t be able to explain it to their shareholders or anyone else for that matter.
7. The fact that I had to endure two weeks of NBC’s crappy coverage in support of my wife who had been a lifelong gymnast though she never made the olympic team but spent her formative years with the Karolyis as her coaches, as well as living and training at the US Women’s Gynastics Training Center while I could have been watching great coverage of major league baseball on any network other than NBC.
8. Too many commercials.
9. Too many promotions of upcoming NBC programs that will suck.
10. NBC’s hippocrisy – Issued press release that they would not air the protest of the Swedish wrestler as “the games are about sportsmanship and not politics”, then did the color story on the Russian athlete and Georgian (Russian province) athlete that are “friends in spite of the conflict”. Apparently it is okay if NBC infuses politics, just not the olympic athletes.
The IOC should permanently ban NBC from ever bidding to cover the olympics in the future.
Just my $.02.
Best,
Curtis
the pool doesn’t work on an iPhone. Too bad
I would have given them a C
i would say ‘worst olympics coverage ever’ but i guess it’s better than seeing only very selected snips on the weekly newsreel. that said, i think it’s ridiculous that NBC tried to use Tiki Barber to explain the intricacies of the new gymnastics scoring system. he was a running back, for american football, when was he ever expected to understand math? it would be nice to have some people who actually tried to learn something about the sports they are covering rather than making fun of something they don’t understand.
As the broadest attempt by a network to integrate new forms of media into a major event, NBC has done a good job.
But Om’s boycott is the type of thing that NBC is avoiding. They are focusing on the sports but willfully ignoring the significant human rights issues that surround the Chinese government. The coverage has, unfortunately, come off as an advertorial for China.
NBC has blown an incredible opportunity inside of the Great Firewall to show China in its true colors, good and band, and for that NBC owes its viewers an apology. They have monopolistic coverage and are only using one lens that sees China exactly how its PR department hopes.
We hear a tune that ends “the land of the free and the home of the brave” frequently during NBC’s coverage; it’s a shame that NBC is showing its cowardice by ignoring China’s perspective on freedom.
I give it an ok. The coverage has been all right and the timeshifting doesn’t bother me personally. I’m not expecting to see much live and if I do (such as the Phelps race), I stay away from the Web.
However the announcing is Bah-rutal. I mostly watch volleyball and if I have to hear again about the kinesio tape or how Todd Rogers’ nickname is “The Professor” or that Dalhauser is tall and bald, I’m going to snap.
Just now, the announcers said “Rogers has a masters in religious studies and he certainly showed a lot of faith in his swing there”
Worst line ever.
Was there ever an Olympics in recent memory where people liked the main broadcast coverage? The problems of too many commercials, USA-only focus, not much beyond swimming, gymnastics and beach blanket volleyball are just the obvious oldteevee mechanics of ensuring enough eyeballs for the ads that pay for the outrageous rights fees.
The Olympics are just too big and too large a monetary risk to move radically to viewing on demand or a la carte programming. Someday it may get there, but it will likely be smaller “big” events like golf tournaments or the NCAA hoops tourney that move fast first and demonstrate that there are different ways to “broadcast” something and reach additive audiences.
For the foreseeable future, however, we are all stuck with the Al Trautwigs of the world and incessant commercial messages that now even encroach on the few seconds alloted to the Olympic fanfares. This is the price you pay for “free” content on a large scale, and it isn’t going away anytime soon because there are still millions who will watch the Olympics in passive couch-potato fashion. Until a majority learns how to use DVRs or Internet feeds, it ain’t getting any better.
It is UNBELIEVABLY LAME that last night, at around 8pm on the West Coast, as Michael Phelps was setting one of the most amazing records in all of sports (8th Gold), NBC on the West Coast was broadcasting:
a. Hour 1.5 of the woman’s marathon, on it’s main station.
b. Prison horror stories on MSNBC
c. Something equally lame on CNBC
Not seeing anything worth watching on NBC, I turned to a meaningless pre-season football game on another network – and THEY flash on the stadium’s big screen: “Congratulation Michael Phelps — 8 Gold Medals!”, seconds after the actual event occurred.
What idiotic NBC executive decided to tape delay the top athletic event of the last 25 years (Phelp’s swim for Gold medal #8) instead of showing it live at prime-time. It was the opportunity of a generation for NBC to build excitement for live coverage of the event. They completely blew it.
45% crap?!?
Come on people, especially people like Curtis, let’s get a grip.
Have we Americans become so snooty and spoiled that we thumb our noses at anything that isn’t absolutely perfect and exactly to our taste?
Good lord, I’m really getting tired of the constant criticism that’s become so fashionable these days.
Can we possibly look at the bright side of things now and again?
I have been watching the online coverage, which I would rate a B. I would rate it an A, but for a couple of reasons:
1) Silverlight is really ASS SLOW. The downstairs media PC, which we used since it runs XP MCE and is attached to the TV, has a Pentium 4/3.2GHz processor. Silverlight/Firefox was using 100% of its CPU, and we actually decided to overclock the computer so we could watch the Olympics without dropped frames. 20 minutes of research later, we had overclocked it to 3.6GHz/220MHz FSB and the Olympics videos were BEAUTIFUL. But imagine the experience of most people who aren’t complete geeks like us! I don’t consider a P4/3.2GHz to be obsolete (even though it is an older single-core architecture), and we don’t have a problem streaming Netflix Live off of that same PC.
2) No full-screen option. What the heck? Also, we used an ad blocker to block the banner ad because they had some Javascript that hicupped the video every time it switched an ad.
BUT…I must say…even though I hope they fix both of these issues for next time, I really enjoyed watching table tennis online. I’d never seen it played competitively, and I loved watching it live! Also, I didn’t miss having commentators. If anything, the online streams show how little the commentators add.
I watched some network coverage, and it’s just not watchable without a TiVO. Way too many ads, and no coverage of any other country other than our “hometown heroes.” Costas was a terrible interviewer. I kept coming back to the online site instead of bothering to watch the network coverage. I have a Tivo, but couldn’t even really be bothered to record it, since I knew I would just have to wade through hours of crap to find the two or three good highlights.
What was even more lame was the local NBC coverage Saturday night after the Phelps extravaganza. Their “report from a local bar” managed to find a place full of Green Bay Packer fans; and their follow up story was about a pooch on Prozac.
And we wonder why the mainstream media is in decline. No wait, we don’t.
I’m not sure why this elicits such polarized reactions. Here’s the thing. Aside from the Silverlight issue, which really bothers me, I think it would be really hard for someone to say that NBC’s coverage is “crap” with a straight face. The combined NBC, CNBC, MSNBC and USA mean you get pretty much anything you want to see. Some of it is live. Some isn’t. I’m a die hard indoor volleyball fan. They’ve broadcast every U.S. Men’s and Women’s matches. Every day there’s about 30+ hours of Olympics coverage. So, come on, folks, what more are you asking for?
This is just silly. Something for people to try and find something to be critical of because it makes them feel smarter?
Frankly, the only complaint I have is that I don’t have a DVR that can record 3 or 4 channels at the same time.
NBC’s coverage really blows.
The Olympics are where the world comes together to see who the greatest athletes are. NBC’s network coverage is so US biased it’s impossible to see what’s really happening. Entire dramas, epic competitions, big stories are just not even making onto the screen. I only really realized how out of whack the coverae was when I watched coverage in the UK and Oz via Bit Torrent.
It’s also very hard to tell what will be on when.
NBCOlympics.com is really frustrating. Hard to navigate, almost impossible to find what you want even days after the event. Let alone if you want to watch something around the time it happens. Effectively useless to me.
I have a 60″ HDTV but out of sheer desperation I am now watching most of the Olympics via Bit Torrent on a laptop
Here’s to the accelerating decline of the gatekeepers. Like the event itself other countries are doing this so much better
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being stinks like a pile of turd and 10 being excellent: a big fat zero. Don’t know which is lamer: tape-delaying the coverage, or ranking countries by total medal count instead of total gold medals as has been customary since the first olive wreath was won, because heaven forbid that the US would lose to the Commies.
I have been watching the Olympics on NBC for the past week. I will say that the opening ceremonies were very well done and interesting to watch. Beyond that, I have seen more inane commercials than olympic activities. Also, constant studio narratives with Bob Costas rather than seeing events live that are going on.
I also feel that the judges are completely biased in their judging the gymnastic competition and are delighted at shafting the USA on just about every single gymnastic event and are openly giving the Chinese the gold medals even when they stumble, as in the vault. I believe that the men and women should have been graded a lot higher in many of the events. It seems that there is no accountability in the new scoring system. No one files a protest against the judging and even if they did, there is no recourse to justify the lousy scoring against the United States. Former Gymnastic USA Mgr. Kyrola even discussed this unfairness in the scoring at length with Bob Costas. It just seems that they can judge any event and give any scoring points to anyone without them being investigated. Pretty sorry spectacle and a sad development to our guys and gals. I probably wont watch much of the next weeks events.
I have to ignore your opening warning to echo the first commenter’s views. I live in Ireland and we have the luxury of coverage across 3 different networks (RTE, BBC and Eurosport). I can say without a doubt that it has been brilliant all round. BBC’s digital interactive service is superb. I haven’t seen any of NBC’s coverage but I imagine it is similar to American TV coverage of most major sporting events i.e ad-heavy with inane self-referential commentary which caters to the lowest common denominator.
Everone likes to moan about how the coverage is limited to the popular sports and the top 5 countries that matter to Americans. How then can you explain that I watched a women’s handball match between Romania and Norway yesterday on MSNBC? The coverage is far from perfect, but the combination of 5 television networks airing near constant coverage, plus the online options are far superior to any past Olympics.
Now if they could just find someone less schmaltzy than Jimmy Roberts to do the athlete profiles, that would be a major improvement.
needed less talking during opening ceremonies and more coverage of crowd reactions. if covering more than one event, use split screen approach to keep viewers aware of the event results. quit asking why
or what motivated contestent to perform as answer will always be the same.
Very worst olympics coverage I have seen my entire life. Watching it on NBC just took away my spirit of sports altogether. Too much of talking, too much of marketing, too much of ads. The time delayed telecast and claiming LIVE is just crap. Not showing any other sports than swimming, gymnastics and showing too much of self preaching life history about players was too much to digest. Everyone want to watch some games not how a player was growing up at his/her age of 3, interview with mom, pop, sister, brother-in-law…. Oh man…. I just stopped watching it on tv. Instead just look at official olympics website and satisfied. Not ready to waste my time anymore.
I wonder how they can truly criticize communist China, which seems to be all they’re interested in doing. Their coverage is not at all sportsmanlike. If I were interested in the ills of the world I would watch an all news channel, not try to escape and watch humanity at its best. Give me a break! Maybe they should not try to monopolize the coverage, so that the American public would have a more democratic viewing of the games, not be at the mercy of their delayed broadcast of the world’s greatest feats – when the rest of the world is viewing them live.!!!! What gives!!??
The part I hate about the TV coverage (maybe it’s a TimeWarner specific issue) is the way Olympic coverage is shown in DVR TV guides. There is this 3 hour segment called “XXIX Olympics”, but no breakdown of individual events.
Impact: If I want to DVR a US Basketball game, I have to record the full 3 hours of coverage.
@devnet
Riiight…Like Adobe Flash 9 is FOSS non-‘proprietorial’ “standards” compliant…not to mention super stable. GTFO.
I swear w/o the bicoastal iBoi infested web2.0 blogflatussphere, people would just get the eff over themselves. Half this agitation comes from uberFanboi’s who feel like their betraying Jobs’ sacred trust by installing Silverlight.
The coverage has been great if you are only interested in swimming or gymnastics. I have managed to see a couple of tennis games but have not been able to see any softball.
Silverlight is baloney. I opted not to download that crap and watch clips elsewhere. Nice going Microsoft.
i’ve watched about 20 minutes of the olympics on my local nbc affiliate and about 15 hours on-line, and while the on-line coverage is better than 4 years ago that’s hardly say anything. i am stunned that, for example, they didn’t put the early rounds of track and field/athletics events on-line. even if nbc wanted to steer viewers to the tube for the finals and semis, what could have been the harm of showing early rounds? they showed early rounds of weightlifting and wrestling, for example (and i loved it). but at least on-line one could get the feeling that this was a competition that involved various sports and many nations; the tv coverage was filled with bob costas (supremely overrated, i mean, supremely) and beach volleyball (which you would think is the most popular sport in america) and phelps, phelps, phelps. oh, and i forgot to mention the pixies on the uneven bars. why not use the web to EXPAND coverage, free people from tv schedules, give the viewers the true feeling of being there? i thought that’s what the internet was supposed to provide? and if you live on the west coast it seems as if you’re virtually penalized. why doesn’t nbc take the attitude that americans might actually enjoy their once-every-four-years of ping pong and badminton because those sports are super fast and highly skilled? so what if i don’t know the world champion pong player — i can clearly recognize the SKILL. and what about weightlifting? when you see a 11o pound woman snatch 280lbs over her head you’ve got to be impressed. these sports aren’t complicated to follow. lift the most (in the fewest attempts or whatever) and you win. score the most points, you win. one final point: one of the joys, to me, is seeing all the different people from around the world. in the 96 olympics in atlanta, there was an afro-japanese woman competing for japan; this year, i saw a japanese woman with a full-blown afro (google it for those too young to remember) … my point is that these and other visuals remind us that it’s a big and complex and colorful world out there and many of us WANT TO SEE IT! okay, i’m rambling and losing my mind now ….
one more point — and this isn’t a political point at all, it’s a cultural/psychological point that is relevant to the american psyche. if my understanding is correct, prior to george bush being elected in 2000, mr. bush had traveled outside of the country only once. when you think about his socio-economic background, that is an astounding fact. but in my experience there are many americans who have this idea that all they ever want or need is within our nation’s borders. as i said, this isn’t a political point and has nothing to do with the election upcoming. this is a cultural observation.
As a broadcasting channel, NBC is completely unprofessional. I can’t believe the non-stop beat up of the chinese team from NBC’s so-called “professional” sports commentators. They didn’t do a good job in explaining the rules and what they did the most was to criticize the chinese team’s performance, particularly in gymnastics. I highly doubt that this is the olympics sportsmanship that we are pursuing. NBC brings neither fair nor professional comments. I guess I can do a better job than, “this is so unfair, Nastia Luikin should be the champion”.
In my opinion, NBC’s TV and online coverage are the best of any Olympics so far. The above whines sound like rants from spoiled brats. Most of you sound like you’re twelve-years old, the age where people think they know everything about everything, and anything that is less than what they regard as perfect is crap. Those of you that actually are 12-years old, then you have an excuse. Those of you that are older but are ranting and stamping your feet like a 12-year old know-it-all are just pathetic.
I have been watching the olympics and switching between the CBC and and the NBC coverage all week. I voted that it was okay but not the best. Unfortunately I listened to their coverage today and was so upset about what they said I looked on the internet for a way to make my comments and there is no forum on their own website for that. 1st disappointment.
What frustrated me was their comments to day about Boltz historical and awesome run in the 100. I was watching it in the middle of the night when they were broadcasting and the two speakers were saying great things. Such as”He is awesome check him slapping his chest and letting up before the end” everyone was on a high. Now that a couple of days have gone by these people have the balls to say that he was celebrating to early and that it is disrespectful. Have you seen how some of the past american olympians have celebrated during and after races. This guy has just done something incredible and he has every right to rejoice. If he was an american I guarantee these comments would not be coming. It bothered me so much I will not watch NBC from now on. So dissapointing to hear them trash an athelete that has done such an incredible job!!
From the UK – have spent last 3 Olympics in US (this time) or Canada. Canada suffered from being so dominated by US coverage. Also tinged with BBC style sentimentalism (Silken Lauman anyone ??) Which I’ve realised is also a trait of NBC.
This time (in Florida)I relied on BBC website to keep up to speed with results (NBC – do you know what live means ? it means it’s happening NOW !!). Disappointed to see UK missed out of opening ceremony, Canada cut to a commercial break; Ireland dismissed in 2 seconds whilst the mighty US marched in to amplified applause far later than their team appeared in the centre of the arena – mystefying.
Then we had the medals table changing from the traditional ranking by Gold Medals; to the ranking by total medals – by an amazing coincidence just when the Chinese overtook the US (and by a superb irony in the year the UK wins more Golds than forever)
I watched a so called US world beater getting outclassed in the 1500m semifinal, with superb runs from the back for British and New Zealand runners – but who were not mentioned, just the American (whose name I forget !).
It’s encouraging to know that American’s are also not thrilled with the coverage – NBC’s coverage makes your country look like a bunch of arrogant jerks to the rest of the world – and you’re so much better than that. (although after a month in Orlando I could do a few jibes about jerk like American’s if I really wanted to !! :- ) (not to mention the Brits on vacation). Mmmm Pie !
I have been so frustrated with the inability to watch the equestrian events on NBC. I tried downloading the plug-ins for my apple computer so I could catch the events on the internet and I am still unable to to view the events due to the fact that none of the plug-ins work. It looks like NBC is catering to only Microsoft users. Bummer. Slap in the face to Apple. Very rude.
I have to agree that NBC’s coverage has to be compared with what’s offered by foreign broadcasters, such as the CBC and BBC, in order to truly understand just how bad NBC is. My first experience was in 1996, when I spent the first week of the Atlanta Games in the States, and the second week in Canada. The CBC’s coverage was far better than NBC’s, with much less talking and nationalism, and much more focus on events rather than background stories.
NBC believes that if it followed the coverage style of some international broadcasters, it would lose a big chunk of the audience and thus not deliver the ratings necessary to pay back its rights fees and production costs. However, the online NBCOlympics video feed actually looks a lot like the international coverage–they use the International feed, with no audio commentary or commercials–but they control the feeds to make sure that no coverage of “US-centric” events is available before it’s shown on the air.
The fact that the NBCOlympics site hasn’t been all that successful could lead one to assume that Americans really prefer jingoistic coverage, when in fact, I think the real problem is the kludgy design of the NBCOlympics site and the Silverlight feeds themselves. If the video was easier to find, easier to use and full-screen, I think that many more people would be watching the online video and skipping the broadcasts.
Too much travlelog not enough pure events. Event selection questionable, for instance who in the US caares about handball or have ever seen it except at olympics. Also, not enough wrestling, one of the original Athens events. Too much beach volleyball but I guess the skimpy atire brings the ratings up on this. Too many inteviews and commentators talking crap.
Frustrating beyond words! It’s the same sports year after year…and none of them are the ones I want to particularly watch. They teased us with the possibility of getting to see lots of variety on the other 4 stations (Oxygen, CNBC, etc.) and then THERE’S NO OLYMPICS COVERAGE, it’s regular programming. I want to see TAEKWONDO!! Martial artists all over the country want to see it–but no, we’re stuck with things like synchronized swimming. Swimming, gymnastics, track and field, ok…we get it. Put it on prime time. But at least give us a vehicle for choice.
NBC’s coverage is complete total and utter crap.
I don’t understand why more live events aren’t shown. Usain Bolt set’s two WORLD records, and I find this out from ESPN!?!?! When the 200m race was on, NBC chose to show the following live events instead:
1. U.S. men’s volleyball,
2. freestyle wrestling,
3. Basketball (Argentina vs. Greece)
All while none of their affiliated stations made any mention of the new world record. Luckily i was able to watch the race on youtube, before NBC took the video down.
Whoever is making the programming decisions should be fired. There is no excuse for not showing the world’s fastest man rewrite history.
NBC should be fired!
Of course the commercials are about every 60 seconds now. People have found a way to get around that though. Everyone we know are taping the games so they can fast forward through the commercials. You didn’t think of that…NBC? You can force just so much on people and then they do it their way. Your planning was a little on the greedy side…you lost.
In the things that make you go duh category:
“Editing for NBC TV “101.” In the Men’s 200 meter race for the gold, after the Jamaican “Hey Mon” dude won the Gold (by the way — what to they eat there that makes them so fast? can’t be that spliff stuff, cuz that’s a definite doping charge – hmmm:)….. broadcaster is speaking about a possible about one of the runners possibly being disqualified for running into another runner’s lane. Running replay, video coverage is focused on the runner from the Netherlands Antilles running in slow motion, while the “drawer” is circling both of this runner’s legs. You would think that they were talking about him, right, that’s what you are seeing. Then, at the same time this video is running, they go straight to the field and the broadcaster dude is asking one of the U.S. runners if he was pissed off and if found disqualified and what would he do? Yes — you read this right, (thank you DVR).. MAKES NO SENSE. Wrong video, wrong runner – right question, wrong audio? Just plain stupid to screw stuff like this up. NBC coverage, comments: No medals.
I’m getting 3 sets of Olympic coverage in my country, and boy am I glad I don’t have only NBC, I would be so pissed.
The time delay for one, all the big news like Bolt breaking records is out online hours before NBC shows it, plus they waver all over the place, I swear it’s a zillion hours of ads, and the bias is so prevalent, they don’t even pretend to report it as news. I could not believe it when after the gymnastics uneven bars when, yet again, they did not agree with the scoring they said when the Chinese *kid* took the podium “does she really think she won that medal” and then one of the judges was called incompetent. I only watch NBC at times for amusements sake really.
I have to say the commentator that is handling the track and field on the ground doing the interviews of individuals as they finish is the worst I have ever seen. When the US or an individual loses he gets right in their face and basically says “you suck – how does that feel?” He questions are not technical in nature but just flat out rude. I am surprised one of them has not punched him in the face or even more surprised that NBC still has him working for them…..
John, I completely agree about the track and field commentator. That one interview with the guy who who had his bronze stripped after he stepped on the line was the most awkward thing I’d ever seen. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk, but this d-bag keeps shoving the microphone in his face. The guys calling the races from the booth aren’t much better. Can’t believe how harsh they are on the runners, like every time an American fails to win the gold it’s like the biggest catastrophe in history.
Volleyball, Beach Volleyball, Water Polo (water volleyball), More beach volleyball, Volleyball, Indoor Volleyball, Beach Volleyball, Volleyball.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!
What a freaking Joke!!!
Can I get another countries coverage of the Olympics here in the US??
Rent some porn if you want to see half naked women on the beach. I know all NBC cares about is its ratings and they want to get a “younger” audience to tune in but, enough already.
NBC you need to review your choices for hosts and your writers!
Costas is so boring..and he looks bored.
In Olympics past there were wonderful insightful stories of the athletes..of many countries! What happened to that? What happened to the explanations of the entertainment (Opening Ceremony)?
What happened to showing us the different sites of this Olympics? Maybe ONCE a day we may see something..when they aren’t focusing on Phelps or Basketball..Volleyball.
This is the Bejing Olympics..not the Phelps Olympics..there are others!
And who in the world is that blonde woman who interviews after all the swim races…she is BORING..she has no clue how to interview.
What about all the other athletes who are competing..where is there time on NBC?
NBC you were a disappointment.
I miss Jim McKay (ABC) He was a GREAT host and he is sorely missed!!
NBC sucks ass! How can I have 4 to 6 channels full of “2008 Summer Olympics” and be stuck either watching the “Athlete” special (on 2 channels simultaneously, for the 15th time in the last week) and or stuck watching
Men’s Handball / Volleyball everyday (No offense to you fans of these games); where’s the rest of the games?!?!
MSNB has limited their coverage of these games to strictly promote their stupid ad-nausium ads (Arby’s being first and worst) and force us to download their assenine program to see the events we want, when there are already set internet format standards!
Basically we’re being raped, yet again, yet another Olympics down the drain… It’s a shame.
WHY DOESN’T ANYONE ASK THE FREAKING VIEWERS WHAT THEY WANT TO WATHCH?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!
I’ll never tune into NBC for anything ever again!
Steve
I am very satisfied. This is an Old School media company that changed things up and improved my experience. Very little soap operatic visits to athlete’s grade schools.
Yes, it could be better. The changes people want are going to come via other channels over time.
This is a TV network, after all.
NBC suck so bad, they cut so many scenes in Opening ceremony and closing cerenmony alone with billions of ads!!!
if NBC can’t play the ceremony or games at live at least play the full freaking scene!!! freaking BS.
NBC’s coverage was more extensive than in previous ones. But they still sucked! Too much beach volleyball and comercials. The only decent coverage was swimming, and they still blew it for the people in the west coast. For other events, they feautered more China than any other countries. For those who like diving, oh man; the only competitors seemed to be the chineese and americans(which they sucked).
MSNBC i think had the most variety of all, but most of the events were taped.
No live events in Track & Field, crap, i can’t remember of one.
For those fans than don’t know of any other sports than Football, Basketball, and Baseball, I bet they say that NBC did a good job, not!
I want ABC/ESPN to win the bid for 2014-2016 so bad!
NBC should be banned from ever broadcasting the Olympic again. Some of the live events were not actually live. Even if they were live, NBC would clip and snip them up so viewers can really see the whole picture. I was so mad at the way they broadcast the 1500m swimming events. They could not even stay for whole f****g 15 mins. I hated it when the commentators said “it’s gonna take about 15 mins to complete, we’ll go take you to blah blah blah”. What the f**k was that? Phelps’ mon was not there so this event did not worth 15 mins of air time? They gave more air time showing men gymnasts changing pants and divers taking showers. And why the f**k NBC commentators kept talking about the love life of Manaudou? I hated the segment they made for Phelps. They made him look like a sexless water pig. Bob Costink kept saying all he did was “eat, sleep and swim”. How the hell can this be served a model for the younger generation with stupid motto like this? Come on. An athlete in the highlight of his youth doesn’t have a need to give a little attention to his boner in the morning? Grow up NBC writers! Or I might throw up if I ever read Phelps biography.
Mind-numbing amounts of volleyball, a game that should be permanently banned from the Olympics, along with Synchronized Swimming, the little girls with sticks with ribbons attached, and most of the mis-judged competitions. Where was the sailing, the Archery, the Equestrian, etc, etc, etc???
In order to get NBC to wake up and televised the events “LIVE” as they claim it is live, people should gather together to boycott every advertiser who advertise during their so called “LIVE” tape delay Olympic broadcast. The only way they would listen is to hurt them where their wallets is. It works everytime.
Silverlight didn’t run on my Mac… kept giving me pop errors!
I spend 16 hours on NBC TV and online everyday. I have to say NBC did good job, thanks NBC. NBC online is fantastic, I watch the game there everyday. In a while I also check the other program TV, I found CCN is suck and bigger lier in the world.
too many commercials
NBC coverage sucks. Way too many commercials, superficial coverage of events, and a lot of useless chatter for commentary, time that would be better spent actually showing us the events. They are also not taking full advnatage of all their stations to fully cover what is happening. Forget the TV and switch to online coverage.
What really stinks..is if you have a small company provider..(in my case Bloomingdale Communications)..they couldn’t afford to get the coverage on MSNBC, CNBC or USA … so we only get to watch CBS..even tho our menus tell us the olympics are being shown…so no Hockey for most of western Michigan…really terrible PR move. No pre olympic notification that this would happen…
oops..I meant NBC…sorry..just so irritated right now I could spit.
The technical aspects of the coverage are terrible. They can’t get the sound levels right between the announcers and the event. You can’t hear the announcer, but you can hear a snowmobile and helicopter on the Snowboardcross events. Just awful.
What a bunch of whores! I was looking forward to watching the Olympics. Not watching commentators telling me about what I just missed and then telling me what I am missing now. Who really cares about “Behind the Olympics”? Give that section to Dr. Phil. We already have to look at him 5 hours of every day. If anyone from NBC does read this they can tell their boss I said they can stick it up their own A@@.
the worst ever ever ever seen I’m 45 years young this is a disgraced and nbc will hopefully find out
I think the woman that is the commentry for the figure skating is awful. She is so negative and seems to only looks for the slighest error. These athletes have worked so hard to get where they are. The reason the Olympians are there is because they are the best. Apparently the best isn’t good enough for her. Who is she anyway?
NBC covereage is so bad. I cant’ beleive we only got 8 seconds of the final 3rd period of the hockey game between USA and Canada tonight- but we managed to get everything we never wanted to see of figure skating and about 92 minutes of commercials. This is riduculous. Wonder if Fox would have done as bad as NBC. Doubt it.
I give it 9 out of 10 – 9 because it is too centric on flag waving.
Why not just hand out gold medals? NBC counts everything as one. Why bother with bronze?
Just give out gold medals to everybody. Everybody wins. How much more egalitarian can you get? Gold for everybody. Make the NBC medal count more meaningful.
NBC sucks. The constant bullshit that Republicans this… and Republicans that… ads throughout the Olympics shows how left they are. NBC Sports has gone down the tubes. Report the sports, leave the politics to politics, this is SPORTS.
The programing schedule, or lack of, of the Hockey games on NBC was poor. What was the reason the National game of Canada was not shown more???
The NBC programers rate a D with regard to the Hockey coverage,especially the womens final, what were they thinking, not much…………
just how slow do you want us to write?
NBC cheated us of proper figure skating, both in comptetitions, which were only on after 11 pm and close to midnight. the sunday exhibitions of winners were NOT SHOWN AT ALL. JUST 2 PERFORMANCES WERE SHOWN BEFORE MIDNIGHT.,
IS THIS NOT A FAMILY PROGRAM? DO ALL FAMILIES STAY UP AFTER MIDNIGHT? DISGUSTED WITH NBC.