Was anybody's coverage great around the world? How about our European members here? What did you think of your coverage? How and why was it good?
I have no interest in NBC, but even with all the commercials, they stand to lose a lot of money. Just the "rights"--nothing else, just the privilege of broadcast cost them USD $820,000,000.00. Remember, then you have to actually PAY for the hundreds of tons of equipment to get there, the thousands of miles of cables, hundreds of cameras, and satellite uplinks and portable control rooms, and hundreds of personnel to actually pull it off. I don't want to think of what that cost. They are a stockholder-owned corporation, not a charity. I was the logistics director for a tiny, tiny project at the LA Olympics in 1984 and the costs my company incurred were staggering.
The Olympics ran for 16 days. Prime time is 8-11, and their broadcasts ran 8-12, generally. That's about 64 hours of primetime broadcast, perhaps a bit more when they ended late or started early for something. What escapes the critics, however, is that they broadcast something like 835 hours of Olympics...hmmm...they just were not at home for the rest of these 700+ hours of programming. There was a lot that people didn't see because the events were run while they were not at home.
Critics grouse because they were watching a tape of a gold medal event at 9:00PM when we knew the outcome. But, if they had been home from work at 2:00PM they might have seen it live! I saw most of USA-Finland hockey live. Then, a few moments of highlights at primetime.
It would be nice if, say, the women's alpine event were run at 8:00PM primetime. But 8:00PM where? Hawaii? New York? Istanbul? It would also be nice if the field and event were only 30 minutes long...but all these events take a very long time...longer than most anybody would stand for watching on TV.
Let's also be realistic. Who is interested in watching Slovenia #3 going down the bobsled run? (Yes, I know--the Slovenians) Or the 30th ranked Alpine skier from Ghana? (Yes, I know, a million Ghanians watching the 5 televisions there) Would YOU keep youself glued to a TV watching 3 hours of the eventual tin, lead and zinc medal winners compete? I don't think so. No, we want to see the German teams; the USA teams on the Bob, and Ivica Kostalic from Croatia, USA's Bode Miller and Aksel Lund Svindal from Norway go down the Alpine runs.
I don't have cable or satellite TV, I rely on over the air. What NBC COULD have done, at little cost, is what CBS did a few years ago--open MORE digital "sub-stations" and run some simultaneous programming. We only had channel 4.1 here. When CBS did March Madness a few years ago, they expanded their channel 62.1 here to 62.2, 62.3, 62.4, and 62.5 running a tremendous amount of basketball all simultaneouly. So instead of just highlights all funneled through the one broadcast, they could have had full coverage of most events (they had the tapes) all broadcast simultaneously. With digital OTA television, it's a simple task. It would not have been live per se, but it all would have been there.
I've heard a lot of NBC criticism, but I've not heard any ways that anyone could somehow make it better besides the obvious--no commercials! But hey, who paid for Shaun White's private half-pipe for training in Colorado? Red Bull. Who paid for Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn's training? Head Skis...
If anyone didn't like this coverage, you are sure to hate coverage of the London and Sochi Olympics coming up, since nearly nothing will be live here in the USA due to the vast time difference.
