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Olympics Shut Down Online Radio Stream Of Radio Stations

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the how-nice dept

Mon, Aug 16th 2004 9:59am — Mike Masnick
It appears the folks running the Olympics are so focused on controlling (i.e., "selling") the rights to broadcast accounts of the Olympic games that they're forcing some radio stations to shut down their internet streams. The radio stations in question have regular radio broadcast rights for the Olympics, but since they didn't pay up to internet broadcast rights, they need to turn off their internet streams for the duration of the games. Considering the fact that it appears that no one is actually attending these games in person, apparently, the Olympics has decided that they're going to squeeze broadcasters for every last penny. Ah, the spirit of the games.
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7 Comments

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  • identicon
    Nicole, 16 Aug 2004 @ 10:29am

    Olympics?

    What's the Olympics? Anyone out there care about this stuff anymore? ;)

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      dorpus, 16 Aug 2004 @ 10:54am

      Re: Olympics?

      Seems to be going the way of "Miss Universe" titles, which only poor countries care about anymore.

      I remember during the Yugoslav civil war, they showed a picture of Sarajevo under a mortar attack, and the logo of the old olympic stadium was splattered with blood. Classic shot.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chomper, 16 Aug 2004 @ 10:50am

    No Subject Given

    Agreed, the Olympics have turned into another media event. Spoiled professional atheletes have been let into what used to be a amateur sporting event.

    Watching the US Basketball team was an embarssment of utter proportion. No pride and plenty of whining.

    I'm not surprised that the Olympics flopped so badly. Watch them blame everything on terrorism.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chris, 16 Aug 2004 @ 11:10am

    No Subject Given

    Actually, I greatly enjoyed the Team USA debacle. I coach youth basketball in the winter, and the Team USA meltdown validated everything I try to teach the kids about team defense and playing together.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jeff, 16 Aug 2004 @ 1:29pm

    similar

    You know something similar is happening w/ Baseball. AM 980 in DC always broadcasts the games on AM. So when I was at work I was expecting to be able to tune into AM 980 online and listen to the game, but NO. Major League Baseball makes them block out all of the baseball games on their online radio stream. That really ticked me off. I mean I can listen to it for free on the radio. Why can't I listen to it for free online. That really ticked me off. Now I dislike MLB even more than I did before.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 16 Aug 2004 @ 1:40pm

      Re: similar

      Baseball has been doing that for 3 years now... ever since they started charging for games. Yeah, I agree that it was stupid, and I can't believe the radio stations agreed to it.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mark, 16 Aug 2004 @ 4:48pm

    Olympics

    Considering what a financial black hole the Olympics has become -- with a gazillion sports, all needing their own arenas, most of which will never be used again after the games -- selling the broadcast rights for top dollar is the only chance the host countries have to even approach break-even status. They're convinced that the only way to protect the value of the broadcast rights is to make them exclusive, hence the prohibition on Internet broadcasts that would allow us to bypass NBC. And honestly, they may be right. The only way to fix the problem is to cut back on the number of events and focus the games on sports that truly have a worldwide audience, but they've been talking about that for decades without really doing anything about it. If they ever manage to do that, the games would be less expensive to put on, which would make it less critical that they squeeze every last dollar out of every conceivable source. But that would mean that rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming would be eliminated as medal events -- and we can't have that!!!

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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