It's An Olympics Tradition: How Difficult Can NBC Universal Make It To Enjoy The Olympics?
from the yet-again dept
Is it really that time again? When NBC screws up its coverage of the Olympics by showing people what it thinks they want to see, rather than what they actually want to see? Every two years, the Olympics does two appallingly annoying things: makes it difficult to watch the Olympics online... and refuses to show it live on TV. In the 20th century view of NBC execs like Rick Cotton, the only thing that matters is prime time television. So they hold off and focus everything around that prime time slot... effectively pissing off everyone else. As Erick Schoenfeld noted: "The only Olympics tweets I've seen all day are from people pissed that NBC is not broadcasting the opening ceremony live."Hell, even when they go on Twitter the Olympics can't do things right. There was a lot of buzz around the fact that NBC and Twitter teamed up to create an "Olympics" hub. Great (though some people are pointing out that NBC's own Twitter feed is now tweeting stories that it refuses to broadcast live). However, as Canada-based reporter Mathew Ingram discovered in trying to look up the Olympics Twitter hub, thanks to NBC Universal restrictions, Twitter is geoblocking access. To check it out, I visited the Olympics hub site from the US and saw this:
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Filed Under: geoblocks, internet, olympics, prime time, streaming, tv, tweeting
Companies: nbc universal, twitter
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Google could broadcast every single event live and stream them for later viewing. It'd be awesome. Everyone would love it.
Come on, Google!
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AGREED!
I don't own a television and would HAPPILY pay for on-demand live streaming coverage.
Every quadrennial I hope that The Olympics coverage has caught up with technology and every time it is a let down.
For now, I'll just enjoy reading all of the U.S. swim team's Tweets as at least the can keep us in the live loop!: https://twitter.com/#!/swimswamnews/us-olympic-swim-team
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I've got a TV, but no cable because I've got a 3 year old and I'm not gonna pay over $50 a month for something I'm barely going to watch because I want to be a decent parent and husband and spend time with my family.
So according to you in my situation, wanting to spend time with family=freetard pirate apologist who is intent on destroying the fabric of life as we know it
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Live Olympics
If I lived out on the West Coast, I could actually watch some of it live.
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You have that backwards...
The 20th century was all about innovation and inventing new technology. The 21st century is all about crushing innovation and locking down new technology.
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20th century thinking my foot
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I wondered...
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If advertisers want my eyeballs, they will need to start advertising on Techdirt.
I'm not going to put myself (or my family) though the trouble of watching the Olympics advertising until they make it easy for me to obtain.
In the meantime, Go Pepsi! Go Wendy's! Go ASIC!
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CTV Olympics
Mike could use his Toronto connection to have a squint.
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Stop The World And Bring back 1960!
Your interweb thingy sucks!
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Maybe they should just block it to everyone that doesn't have pay for view. It'd work about as well.
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Shocking. Next you will fail to understand that the sky is blue.
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Rights for tweets?
I understand TV rights, but the Olympics hub is just about tweets. Those tweets are global. No reason to limit.
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When it says "Anonymous Coward" it isn't actually "anonymous". Techdirt knows your IP address and could rather easily publish it for the world to see. Armed with your IP address a savvy social engineer could call your ISP and have your name, address, and phone number and publish this data as well. All of this could be done literally within minutes.
But Techdirt doesn't do that because they respect your privacy and right to speak your ignorant mind.
It's best to not provoke the caged lion when the cage door is wide open...
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I'm amazed you understand that given how much of a hard time you have with reading comprehension.
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I do it myself to view american TV shows on services such as Hulu. You should be able to use the BBC iPlayer once you're up and running.
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Thank you NBC
It was great. Since it isn't live anyway, it really doesn't matter if we watch it when it airs, or a little bi later. We were able to kip all th commercials and see about two hours of show in 90 minutes (I wish we'd skipped the rap too).
My wife is still watching; I had my fill. Anyway, this slight personal delay worked so well we I'll do it for je rest of the games. So thanks NBC for showing us that not watching live means not watching commercials.
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Thank you NBC
It was great. Since it isn't live anyway, it really doesn't matter if we watch it when it airs, or a little bi later. We were able to kip all th commercials and see about two hours of show in 90 minutes (I wish we'd skipped the rap too).
My wife is still watching; I had my fill. Anyway, this slight personal delay worked so well we I'll do it for je rest of the games. So thanks NBC for showing us that not watching live means not watching commercials.
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This is what destroying culture looks like
For all those IP maximalists who demand strict IP to preserve culture, FUCK YOU.
The Olympics are supposed to be about GLOBAL goodwill and are an historical event. We live in a time with technology that allows everyone around the world to view and record and share the experience in real time. But we can't.
The Olympics should be the one event where all IP is suspended.
Please explain how this is protecting culture.
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=)
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Nor do Yanks who know Mike's trick!
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you're talking out of your ass
This article is full of shit.
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Rick -- "We delay everything till Prime Time and then start to stream on Silverlight just like we have in the past. Here's the playbook from Beijing just follow everything in it!"
(Rick passes the playbook to Programming"
Porgramming -- "Hey, cool! Thanks!"
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The problem
So after all that work I have not a whole lot to show for it. Time to see if there are other less legitimate options to what the event i want when i want with a minimum of fuss.....
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I wish the official olympic site was as welcoming.
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Of course, if you're going to play Insult Other Countries, it's almost a shame Santorum isn't in the race anymore.
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Honesty is good trait, no doubt, and is somewhat lacking in most politicians. What really bothers most of us commoners is when they lie straight to your face and expect everyone to believe it. Then they act all annoyed when called out on it and refer to it as "gotcha journalism".
I'm relieved that the American Taliban is no longer in the race, however - I'm sure they will be back.
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"It's An Olympics Tradition. . ."
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Real Solution... Dump NBC!!!
AND GUESS WHAT!!! I Saw the opening ceremonies live, and get to watch all the events all the sessions no matter what, because they are all streamed and if I happen to be asleep, I can catchup. all 24 streams of the olympics live in HD.
none of this commercial bullshit that we as americans have come to accept as TV... if the match is 20 minutes long, your watching 20 minutes of folks playing.
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No adverts
So we can see any sport we choose at no extra cost.
They also showed the opening ceremony in 3D
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