Dear NBC : Suggestions to consider for the Winter Olympics

[greyhorse]

Well, we got through the Covid Olympics.  Couldn't believe there was talk about it being cancelled, but yes, there's a worldwide pandemic.  But also the story was out I think two days before the games were to start.  Too much invested by too many to cancel at such a last minute.  But as it was, NBC lost big time.

Ratings were down 50-60%.  Advertisers that paid a ton of money had to be given extra spots and air time to make up for the poor ratings.  Perhaps that's why we always saw the same commercials over and over.  Protests such as Gwen Berry's in the Olympic trials for blamed for part of the loss of interest in the Games.  But I think for the majority of people who didn't tune in, it's just the mere fact that we're in a pandemic and there are more pressing concerns to concentrate on.

I enjoyed for the most part watching what I saw.  But as with any Olympics half way around the world, the time difference and NBC holding back coverage to try to draw a prime time audience was a disaster.  Were all events shown live on Peacock if we were to wake up in the middle of the night?  Or just some of them?  I liked that there were many available channels, but it became a crazy constant channel flipping rotation of NBC, NBCS, USA, Golf, CNBC, Olympics channel, repeat.  Not to mention Peacock, which for me would involve switching to Apple TV so I could use the Peacock app.  It seemed very hard to find a schedule of what was on when, which events were actually LIVE, etc.

There was a few times I saw when Mike Tirico had all five screens up on the tv and was narrating what could be seen where and what was happening.  Sort of of like the NFL Sunday Ticket or I think during the tennis majors, you can see five matches at once and hear the audio to one of the screens.  That was so helpful in allowing me to quickly focus where I wanted to go.  I'd like to see more of that next time.  I know they can't dedicate a whole channel to it - or maybe that's what they run on the Olympic channel, which in my observation never really seemed to show events but just news recaps of what happened.  That would be a good place for it.

I'd also like to see the Peacock app change it's format.  It's hard to stay spoiler free in this day and age.  The only way you can is to avoid everything all together.  I think Peacock showed live events, and then as a non-premium customer, I could see the replays the next day?  But even if I were successful at that impossible task of staying spoiler free, when I went to Peacock to look for replays, each little thumbnail selection would be captioned with "So and so wins Silver in event!"  Why do that?  Why not just say "800M Men's Final"?

[BlackberryJam]

DirecTV has a deal with the tennis majors where they have six or so dedicated channels. One is the "main" channel with coverage of various high profile matches, interviews, commentary, etc. Five are just various courts around the venue with each channel dedicated to a specific court, sometimes with commentary, some not. And then a "mix" channel showing showing all six of the other channels at once in boxes. 

I would have loved that for this Olympics. Each even should have had a dedicated feed with a mix. I get that would be difficult with multiple events going on at once, like discus during the 1500m trials. I know there were multiple things happening, but a system like that would be so much better.

I think ratings suffered because of the time change and the needless embargos. What was put together for the main coverage on NBC was messy and unstructured. It all felt very slapdash. And then if you're going to embargo coverage of an event until primetime, at least edit that coverage so you see all of the athletes compete rather than seeing only two athletes compete then 6 minutes of watching the judges discuss an inquiry. Come on. The NFL network manages to cut to Red Zone plays on the fly. They had hours to edit that crap. NBC had hours to edit that coverage into something good.

Commentary. Get better commentators in rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, skateboarding, BMX and a few others. Explain the sport, don't just say "That had a few errors." Tell us what they were. Cynthia Potter of diving knows her stuff. The equestrian commentary was good as was swimming, even the artistic. Get rid of Mike Tirico. Yes, it was in the 90s, but he actually got suspended for groping, stalking and soliticiting women. He may have "done his time" but stop rewarding him with promotions. 

 

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, BlackberryJam said:

I would have loved that for this Olympics. Each even should have had a dedicated feed with a mix. I get that would be difficult with multiple events going on at once, like discus during the 1500m trials. I know there were multiple things happening, but a system like that would be so much better.

The online streaming at nbcolympics.com and the NBC Sports app did something sort of like this for track & field and gymnastics. For the women's team and all-around gymnastics events they had a 4-screen split, with each screen dedicated to one of the four apparatuses. No commentary, but you could watch every athlete go. It was kind of funny actually, because since the vaults are so much shorter than the other three, one of the 4 screens inevitably ended up just showing a bunch of athletes standing around waiting for the other 3 to finish. Not sure if they did the same with the men, since you'd have to have a 6-screen split.

Each session of track & field had an "integrated" feed, where they would cut back and forth between whichever race was currently being run, and whichever field events were happening. You got MOST of the throwing and jumping (about 99% more than you got on primetime). But they also had separate feeds dedicated to each field event. So if you really wanted to see every pole vaulter go, you could watch that live (without commentary).

It was a nice little a la carte set up, and could maybe be expanded to other platforms if they get enough positive feedback for it.

[BlackberryJam]

7 minutes ago, tracyscott76 said:

The online streaming at nbcolympics.com and the NBC Sports app did something sort of like this for track & field and gymnastics. For the women's team and all-around gymnastics events they had a 4-screen split, with each screen dedicated to one of the four apparatuses. No commentary, but you could watch every athlete go. It was kind of funny actually, because since the vaults are so much shorter than the other three, one of the 4 screens inevitably ended up just showing a bunch of athletes standing around waiting for the other 3 to finish. Not sure if they did the same with the men, since you'd have to have a 6-screen split.

Each session of track & field had an "integrated" feed, where they would cut back and forth between whichever race was currently being run, and whichever field events were happening. You got MOST of the throwing and jumping (about 99% more than you got on primetime). But they also had separate feeds dedicated to each field event. So if you really wanted to see every pole vaulter go, you could watch that live (without commentary).

It was a nice little a la carte set up, and could maybe be expanded to other platforms if they get enough positive feedback for it.

My experience with the Sports App included a lot of mislabeled replays, difficult to find events, and it was just unwieldy. Each thing I wanted to do seemed to take 3 or 4 unnecessary steps. Not to mentioned that it wasn't well-advertised. Ugh. Hopefully they can clean it up for Winter.

Slapdash. Just slapdash. Maybe they can learn from this experience.

[MaryMitch]

I don't mind watching events where I know the results. What bugged me the most about NBC's coverage is the descriptions of the events on the TV guide were wrong half the time. I was jumping around the channels trying to find the events I wanted to watch.

[Rickster]

1 minute ago, MaryMitch said:

I don't mind watching events where I know the results. What bugged me the most about NBC's coverage is the descriptions of the events on the TV guide were wrong half the time. I was jumping around the channels trying to find the events I wanted to watch.

My number one complaint as well. Plus you often never knew when in 6 hours of coverage the event you wanted to see would be shown.

It did occur to me at some point in these Olympics that NBC, being owned by Comcast, might not be fully motivated to create a great online streaming resource for coverage that draws people away from cable TV coverage.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, BlackberryJam said:

My experience with the Sports App included a lot of mislabeled replays, difficult to find events, and it was just unwieldy. Each thing I wanted to do seemed to take 3 or 4 unnecessary steps. Not to mentioned that it wasn't well-advertised. Ugh. Hopefully they can clean it up for Winter.

Slapdash. Just slapdash. Maybe they can learn from this experience.

The Sports App worked ok for me, though I didn't use it for replays, just live coverage. I watched a few replays on NBC's website and they worked ok for me, too. But if it's not working for everyone, that's a problem.

35 minutes ago, Rickster said:

44 minutes ago, MaryMitch said:

I don't mind watching events where I know the results. What bugged me the most about NBC's coverage is the descriptions of the events on the TV guide were wrong half the time. I was jumping around the channels trying to find the events I wanted to watch.

My number one complaint as well. Plus you often never knew when in 6 hours of coverage the event you wanted to see would be shown.

I somewhat feel NBC's pain on this when they were showing live events, because with delays and rescheduling of events, sometimes they would have to switch things up on the fly. Especially difficult for them during primetime, when they're trying to show taped events from earlier in the day/overnight, while new live things were also happening. Definitely made things a bit frustrating, though.

[Bunnyette]

Something to consider, do not have Tara & Johnny as commentators on anything 

[Iseut]

 I do often like just turning on a channel and being pleasantly surprised to get interested in a sport I might not otherwise seek out, like table tennis or handball, and with the fairly vague descriptors for each network, I was able to do that a lot and receive a lot better coverage and usually more interesting commentary than I did on the basic NBC daytime or primetime options (though I often watched those too, to get the "old school" Olympic experience with the more glamorous sports and the tearjerking stories. What can I say, I'm a sucker for it all!).

That said, we also have a Fire stick set up one on of our 2 tvs, which had the more general options above, as well as a better organized system that made it easier to search for specific sports when I wanted to do that. I'm sure it's harder for them to get ad dollars when the events are split out like that, but there were still plenty of commercials, and I think more viewers overall would tune in if they knew they were going to be able to watch the sports they wanted, rather than, say, 2 hours of beach volleyball wherein they keep teasing 20 minutes of gymnastics (15 of which are just USA gymnasts walking around dramatically in slow motion). 

[proserpina65]

1 hour ago, MaryMitch said:

I don't mind watching events where I know the results. What bugged me the most about NBC's coverage is the descriptions of the events on the TV guide were wrong half the time. I was jumping around the channels trying to find the events I wanted to watch.

I get that some of it had to be an approximation with live events which could run over, but I swear I only saw the beginning of the team jumping final in Equestrian by accidently being on the right channel at the right time.

I'm tired of watching the same damned tearjerky background video over and over, when I could be watching actual athletes competing in their events.  That's what I want to watch.  I don't care about someone's dad or mom, etc., just show them competing.  This is particularly annoying when there's a big time difference and most of the competition is on tape.

[emma675]

1 hour ago, MaryMitch said:

I don't mind watching events where I know the results. What bugged me the most about NBC's coverage is the descriptions of the events on the TV guide were wrong half the time. I was jumping around the channels trying to find the events I wanted to watch.

Same. I set a recording one night for a block of coverage that NBC swore was going to be a non-US men's basketball game and instead I got two hours of women's handball and the first 20 minutes of the basketball game I wanted to watch. And it's not like the handball game went long and bumped basketball, it started at the beginning of the game. NBC was just incredibly sloppy. 

[blackwing]

I agree that NBC did not do a very good job with the way they packaged the events.  I did notice when they said that things were "live" but most nights it seemed like the coverage they showed in the first half to two thirds of the evening (I'm on Central time) was just filler until about the 9 pm hour when live stuff was actually happening.  Most days I would find out on the internet who won so it was a bit anticlimactic when they actually aired the tape delayed events.

I also agree that it would be nice if there was some "master channel" where I could see what was airing on each channel simultaneously, like how tennis matches are set up (I have Direct TV).  It was exhausting constantly flipping between the various NBC channels to see what was airing.  It'd be nice if there was some kind of ticker or screen occasionally every 30 minutes or so telling us what was airing on each channel.

That said, I am glad that we do have multiple channel options... because of that, I was able to see some sports that I normally would not see.  Admittedly, most of this kind of viewing for me ended up being some kind of "best of a bad situation" where I would pick the one that sounded least boring to me.  That's how I ended up watching kayak slalom (so cool!), BMX and skateboarding in the skate park (ehh), and rhythmic gymnastics.  

For the Winter Olympics (which hold much more interest for me) I do think I will have to investigate streaming on the website a bit more.

4 hours ago, BlackberryJam said:

DirecTV has a deal with the tennis majors where they have six or so dedicated channels. One is the "main" channel with coverage of various high profile matches, interviews, commentary, etc. Five are just various courts around the venue with each channel dedicated to a specific court, sometimes with commentary, some not. And then a "mix" channel showing showing all six of the other channels at once in boxes. 

I would have loved that for this Olympics. Each even should have had a dedicated feed with a mix. I get that would be difficult with multiple events going on at once, like discus during the 1500m trials. I know there were multiple things happening, but a system like that would be so much better.

I think ratings suffered because of the time change and the needless embargos. What was put together for the main coverage on NBC was messy and unstructured. It all felt very slapdash. And then if you're going to embargo coverage of an event until primetime, at least edit that coverage so you see all of the athletes compete rather than seeing only two athletes compete then 6 minutes of watching the judges discuss an inquiry. Come on. The NFL network manages to cut to Red Zone plays on the fly. They had hours to edit that crap. NBC had hours to edit that coverage into something good.

Commentary. Get better commentators in rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, skateboarding, BMX and a few others. Explain the sport, don't just say "That had a few errors." Tell us what they were. Cynthia Potter of diving knows her stuff. The equestrian commentary was good as was swimming, even the artistic. Get rid of Mike Tirico. Yes, it was in the 90s, but he actually got suspended for groping, stalking and soliticiting women. He may have "done his time" but stop rewarding him with promotions. 

 

 

I agree about Mike Tirico, I am not sure what to make of him.  And if these allegations were true about him, not sure why they continue to give him the head job.

What I find odd about him is that comment of his from several years ago in which he insisted that he is not black.  It was something like "I'm just an Italian kid from the Bronx".  From what I recall, his parents separated when he was young and he never really knew his dad.  He said his mom's family is all white and he's seen pictures of his dad's family and they are all white.  My thought was, maybe the picture he was shown wasn't actually a picture of his dad, and it was just something shown to him to get him to stop asking.  People ask him questions and he says he will do an ancestry test because he wants to find out, and so do his kids.  So I guess I don't understand why he wouldn't want to find out?

I remember when from the last time when he was the anchor and I thought it was great that there is more diversity in sports media for the Olympics.  Then I remembered his comments that he doesn't identify as black and apparently has no desire to find out.  I guess everyone is different, but I know that I would like to know more about my ancestry if I didn't know.

[proserpina65]

2 hours ago, emma675 said:

Same. I set a recording one night for a block of coverage that NBC swore was going to be a non-US men's basketball game and instead I got two hours of women's handball and the first 20 minutes of the basketball game I wanted to watch. And it's not like the handball game went long and bumped basketball, it started at the beginning of the game. NBC was just incredibly sloppy. 

I completely missed the rugby sevens final this way.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, blackwing said:

For the Winter Olympics (which hold much more interest for me) I do think I will have to investigate streaming on the website a bit more.

They really changed how they organized the website this time, which took a little bit of experimenting to get the hang of. But once I did, I found it pretty handy in terms of seeing what events were running when. There was a list of available streams right there on the schedule page which could be easily refreshed. I usually wound up with 4 windows open at once...plus one on my phone using the app, and flipping back and forth among the 4 or so TV channels -- I might have a problem XD

I know others here have said they had issues with stream links opening the wrong events and choppy playback, but I didn't have any issues like that (aside from the usual occasional freezing, which...it's the internet, it happens)

Of course, now that I figured it out, they'll change it all again for the Winter Olympics.

[blueray]

As I said in the other thread don't be the one to spoil me. Yes, I know it would be all over social media but as soon as I went to youtube's homepage in huge letters NBC's channel told me who won the gymnastics event that day. Instead of just saying which event it was. 

I think the one they did pretty good was swimming but I think this was because it was mostly live when I watched it at 10pm EST. I also was able to flip to other channels to see the random sports, as that is always fun. 

The biggest thing for me (which I know they will not fix) is their obsession with the US Team. I get that's who we are cheering for but you can't show other people or keep the finish list correct instead of cutting people out to just show where the US team is. I also miss the medal ceremony's but I know most people don't watch them. I love hearing the different anthems of which ever country won.

[Lady Whistleup]

This is more for Paris but:

1) Men's Gymnastics. It exists and it's thrilling. Show more routines.

2) Less beach volleyball. The Oly's are full of beautiful people. It's not just the beach volleyball players.

3) Stop chacking MEDAL WINNING routines in gymnastics.

4) SHow less swimming heats. Unless there's a major upset like Katie Ledecky didn't make the finals those are pretty dull.

5) The men's basketball tournament had some great games. Make it easier to watch said games.

6) Stop focusing on five athletes. All that media scrutiny is part of the reason Simone Biles fell apart.

[blackwing]

11 minutes ago, blueray said:

The biggest thing for me (which I know they will not fix) is their obsession with the US Team. I get that's who we are cheering for but you can't show other people or keep the finish list correct instead of cutting people out to just show where the US team is. I also miss the medal ceremony's but I know most people don't watch them. I love hearing the different anthems of which ever country won.

Yes.  Granted I don't think I paid as much attention to these Olympics as in past years, but did they even show any non-U.S. medal ceremonies?  I seem to recall seeing and hearing many medal ceremonies in the past and hearing different anthems.  In particular, I seem to recall that we would often get to see Canadian gold medal ceremonies, perhaps as a nod to the two countries' longstanding friendship and shared border.  I distinctly remember the Canadian woman wrestler who was born to immigrant parents and she was flat out sobbing from joy about hearing the Canadian anthem and what being Canadian meant to her.

Nowadays of course, NBC doesn't show any Canadians unless they happen to medal.  The fact that Ellie Black finished fourth in the balance beam and was the only one of the competitors they didn't air is just inexcuseable.  I guess NBC wanted to pretend that Simone Biles finished bronze and Suni Lee almost did, because that's how they displayed the results.  1-2-3-5.

[blueray]

4 minutes ago, blackwing said:

Nowadays of course, NBC doesn't show any Canadians unless they happen to medal.  The fact that Ellie Black finished fourth in the balance beam and was the only one of the competitors they didn't air is just inexcuseable.  I guess NBC wanted to pretend that Simone Biles finished bronze and Suni Lee almost did, because that's how they displayed the results.  1-2-3-5.

That was actually what I was refering too. That was insulting and they should have shown her routine (as I wanted to see it) and listed her in 4th were she was.

[Iseut]

4 minutes ago, blueray said:

That was actually what I was refering too. That was insulting and they should have shown her routine (as I wanted to see it) and listed her in 4th were she was.

I also hate NBC's obsession with only showing "disasters." In addition to cutting out decent, if not medal winning, gymnastics routines, some of the primetime coverage would only show a promising gymnast from another country if that gymnast fell from glory or whatever. It happened when the Chinese gymnast fell off the bar (didn't even show her routine, just clipped to the fall, made a bunch of gasps over it, and cut back to the Americans), and the Russian rhythmic gymnast who made an error on the ribbon and had to switch it out to the white RIBBON OF SHAME. That was literally all they showed for rhythmic gymnastics on primetime one night; not the routines of the others that were nearly as good or better. So frustrating. Show at least the top 5 damn routines, no matter what country they're from!

[blackwing]

3 minutes ago, blueray said:

That was actually what I was refering too. That was insulting and they should have shown her routine (as I wanted to see it) and listed her in 4th were she was.

Yes.  There were only 8 competitors.  They aired this event in primetime, obviously edited/cut/etc.  And yet somehow, NBC decided to air the routines of the Russian and the Brazilian, who finished in 7th and 8th place, instead of the Canadian who finished in 4th.  No Canadian woman has ever gotten a medal in artistic gymnastics.  This was the closest ever and NBC decided to omit her.

I'd still like to understand the explanation behind that decision... my theory is that both the Russian and the Brazilian almost fell, and NBC wanted to display their program in a cruel "ha ha" manner.  Or they didn't want anyone to see that the somebody besides the two Chinese girls and Simone was better than the AA champion.  Frankly, I think it would have been nice seeing Ellie Black's routine to see why she placed ahead of Lee.

[Rickster]

21 minutes ago, blackwing said:

Yes.  Granted I don't think I paid as much attention to these Olympics as in past years, but did they even show any non-U.S. medal ceremonies?  I seem to recall seeing and hearing many medal ceremonies in the past and hearing different anthems.  In particular, I seem to recall that we would often get to see Canadian gold medal ceremonies, perhaps as a nod to the two countries' longstanding friendship and shared border.  I distinctly remember the Canadian woman wrestler who was born to immigrant parents and she was flat out sobbing from joy about hearing the Canadian anthem and what being Canadian meant to her.

 

They did. I saw an Australian winner and anthem very early on, and I can remember hearing the weird ROC Tchaikovsky piece more than once. But in fairness to NBC, I think in recent Olympics they have tried to downplay the nationalism (for everyone)a bit. I can remember when every broadcast ended with the Star Spangled Banner.

Regarding Mike Tirico’s ancestry, I might tactfully suggest the photo his mother showed him of her husband might not be the same as showing him a picture of his father. 

[shoregirl]

50 minutes ago, Lady Whistleup said:

This is more for Paris but:

1) Men's Gymnastics. It exists and it's thrilling. Show more routines.

2) Less beach volleyball. The Oly's are full of beautiful people. It's not just the beach volleyball players.

3) Stop chacking MEDAL WINNING routines in gymnastics.

4) SHow less swimming heats. Unless there's a major upset like Katie Ledecky didn't make the finals those are pretty dull.

5) The men's basketball tournament had some great games. Make it easier to watch said games.

6) Stop focusing on five athletes. All that media scrutiny is part of the reason Simone Biles fell apart.

See I like the beach volleyball and the swimming heats and  don't find the mens gymnastics particularly exciting. Not to mention they were mostly showing the beach volleyball live when the gymnastic happen like 12 hrs before.  NBC is not going to be able to please everyone . maybe more attention would be paid to mens gymnastics if the US Men were more competitive.

[chitowngirl]

I was irritated when I flipped on USA and they were showing an event I wasn’t interested in, so I’d flip on NBC…and they’d be showing the same event.

[michelec]

Hit or miss all the way. I didn't even bother with the mothership (NBC) because, as always, their coverage was essentially a two-week long soap opera with a few events sprinkled in. USA and CNBC were fairly decent with the live events, in particular USA with the morning session (nighttime here) of track and field, and diving. I don't understand why NBCSN coverage of live events was extremely limited, it's like 90 percent of what they aired had already appeared on the other channels. I didn't bother with Peacock except for US Men's basketball.

The one bright spot for me was the NBC Sports app, probably because most of it was the OBS feed and commentators. I was able to see some of the non-marquee sports, such as weightlifting and boxing, live with no commentary. And their replay of the night track and field session was my must-watch every afternoon last week.

For Beijing I hope that NBC can build upon the app by lifting the embargo on marquee sports like figure skating, but I'm not holding my breath on that. Also with NBCSN going off the air at the end of this year, I wonder how that will impact how the coverage is distributed. Maybe Bravo or E! will become a stand-in for those 2+ weeks.

Edited August 9, 2021 by michelec

[dmeets]

It may be less of an issue with the Winter Olympics events, but have the camera operators stop acting like they're composing art projects. The diving coverage especially was full of pointless angles and zoom-ins on the platform/springboard of divers' finger nails... ankles... arm pits... the tops of their heads while the camera peeks up from below the platform. There's no art cinematography award, and some of the zoom-ins bordered on fetish.

It's okay to show events in their entirety, even if Team USA winds up not being a factor for the podium (looking at you men's gymnastics... or rather, not looking at you since NBC couldn't be bothered most of the time.)

And yes, please try to make programming more DVR friendly, or easily searchable on the apps by event (in its entirety!). Try splitting that 5-6 hour block into smaller programs rather than just tell me Diving/Equestrian/Water Polo/Weightlifting/Volleyball/Shooting (in no particular order).

Oh and fix the audio sync issues. NBC broadcasts (at least on Spectrum) had a 1-2 second delay pretty much throughout the entire two weeks. Really noticeable on diving and during Tirico's segments.

Edited August 9, 2021 by dmeets

[Lady Whistleup]

I think the five athlete focus kills the broadcasting. If one of the five doesn't deliver, they have to do this awkward pivot and squeeze in another athlete. 

Part of the Olys is seeing athletes from all over the world. For instance, for the beam event finals, I would have liked NBC to explain WHY the Chinese girls scored higher than Simone. 

[proserpina65]

4 hours ago, Rickster said:

But in fairness to NBC, I think in recent Olympics they have tried to downplay the nationalism (for everyone)a bit.

They have?  I really didn't notice an improvement.

4 hours ago, shoregirl said:

See I like the beach volleyball and the swimming heats and  don't find the mens gymnastics particularly exciting. Not to mention they were mostly showing the beach volleyball live when the gymnastic happen like 12 hrs before.  NBC is not going to be able to please everyone . maybe more attention would be paid to mens gymnastics if the US Men were more competitive.

They could've shown more of a mix instead of every freaking US beach volleyball match.  And the US men shouldn't have to be competitive to show more than 5 minutes of men's gymnastics at a time.

3 hours ago, michelec said:

USA and CNBC were fairly decent with the live events, in particular USA with the morning session (nighttime here) of track and field, and diving. I don't understand why NBCSN coverage of live events was extremely limited, it's like 90 percent of what they aired had already appeared on the other channels.

The exception to this was Equestrian coverage - NBCSN (I think it was) showed a lot of it.

[AuntieDiane6]

On 8/9/2021 at 6:49 PM, michelec said:

For Beijing I hope that NBC can build upon the app by lifting the embargo on marquee sports like figure skating, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

I saw the gymnastics live every day on nbcolympics.com  so I don't understand your concern, unless you thought it should have been shown on NBC in the morning?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, AuntieDiane6 said:

On 8/9/2021 at 6:49 PM, michelec said:

For Beijing I hope that NBC can build upon the app by lifting the embargo on marquee sports like figure skating, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

I saw the gymnastics live every day on nbcolympics.com  so I don't understand your concern, unless you thought it should have been shown on NBC in the morning?

Not everyone was able to see the gymnastics live, since in certain time zones it was on at 4am or so. NBC's sports app and website were supposed to provide replays so people could see what they missed, but in the case of balance beam featuring Simone Biles, for example, the replays were held back until after it had aired on NBC primetime, over 12 hours later. Not ideal.

[michelec]

6 hours ago, AuntieDiane6 said:

I saw the gymnastics live every day on nbcolympics.com  so I don't understand your concern, unless you thought it should have been shown on NBC in the morning?

It wasn't live on the app that was on Roku. It was folded into the main NBC coverage. YMMV.

[Bill1978]

I'm surprised NBC didn't do what the broadcasting network did here in Australia.

In Australia, we had the main station that did the traditional broadcast (what I call swimming, sob stories and fluff pieces), they used one of their digital stations to air other events (what I call team sports involving Australia). And then they had their app which had 42 'channels'. It was a one stop shop for the Olympics. Basically every sport was given it's own channel (and from what I can tell each channel was basically using the official Olympic feed), some of the channels had commentary provided (that wasn't Australian - possibly British) while others there was no commentary. Everything was available to watch live and always available to watch after the event concluded. Every now and then an ad would occur in the feed, so sponsorship still occurred.

This approach didn't seem to eat into the ratings of the traditional broadcast, in fact it looked like they were some of the best ratings in a long time for the Olympics. Even if I personally didn't watch the main broadcast, it seems a lot of Australian did.

Watching everything via the app gave me the best Olympics viewing experience I have had in a long time. I actually got to watch events in full, instead of waiting for a 15 second spot in a News update. For the first time I watched at least 30 minutes of every sport that was available. So for the first time I watched the full program of sports like Modern Pentathlon, Artistic Swimming, Rhythmic Gymnastics. Instead of being forced to watching Swimming replays for the 100th time, I actually got to watch everything.

If NBC is looking to adapt to the new viewing era, they really should look at how Australia presented the Tokyo Olympics.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Bill1978 said:

I'm surprised NBC didn't do what the broadcasting network did here in Australia.

In Australia, we had the main station that did the traditional broadcast (what I call swimming, sob stories and fluff pieces), they used one of their digital stations to air other events (what I call team sports involving Australia). And then they had their app which had 42 'channels'. It was a one stop shop for the Olympics. Basically every sport was given it's own channel (and from what I can tell each channel was basically using the official Olympic feed), some of the channels had commentary provided (that wasn't Australian - possibly British) while others there was no commentary. Everything was available to watch live and always available to watch after the event concluded. Every now and then an ad would occur in the feed, so sponsorship still occurred.

This approach didn't seem to eat into the ratings of the traditional broadcast, in fact it looked like they were some of the best ratings in a long time for the Olympics. Even if I personally didn't watch the main broadcast, it seems a lot of Australian did.

Watching everything via the app gave me the best Olympics viewing experience I have had in a long time. I actually got to watch events in full, instead of waiting for a 15 second spot in a News update. For the first time I watched at least 30 minutes of every sport that was available. So for the first time I watched the full program of sports like Modern Pentathlon, Artistic Swimming, Rhythmic Gymnastics. Instead of being forced to watching Swimming replays for the 100th time, I actually got to watch everything.

If NBC is looking to adapt to the new viewing era, they really should look at how Australia presented the Tokyo Olympics.

I mean that's basically what NBC did. They had the traditional network broadcasts, but also had pretty much everything available in full on their website and the sports app (I can't comment on the Roku app mentioned above, since I don't have it), sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. While there wasn't a channel dedicated to each sport, it was pretty easy to find everything. And there were replays for everything, except for the occasional lapse like the balance beam which I referred to up above.

I saw lots of stories about how NBC's ratings for the Olympics weren't great, but I don't know how much that has to do with the self-generated competition of their website and app, and how much it has to do with general viewing trends. (Though I do think this was by far the least I've paid attention to the network broadcasts for an Olympics.)

Overall, I think it's a good system and they should keep it with some tweaks.

[AuntieDiane6]

On 8/9/2021 at 6:58 PM, dmeets said:

It's okay to show events in their entirety, even if Team USA winds up not being a factor for the podium (looking at you men's gymnastics... or rather, not looking at you since NBC couldn't be bothered most of the time.)

 

The US Men's Team is an embarrassment.  A history of dumb mistakes, choking in clutch performances and a lot of hubris.  No wonder Simone didn't want them on her tour.

Let them live up to their potential and then they'll be the main attraction.