Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

from the you're-not-doing-a-good-job dept

NBC (now Comcast NBC Universal) has enjoyed the rights to broadcast the US Olympics since 1998. In 2011, the company paid $4.4 billion for exclusive US broadcast rights to air the Olympics through 2020. In 2014, Comcast NBC Universal shelled out another $7.75 billion for the rights to broadcast the summer and winter Olympics in the US... until the year 2032.

Despite years of experience Comcast/NBC still struggles to provide users what they actually want. For years the cable, broadband, and broadcast giant has been criticized for refusing to air events live, spoiling some events, implementing annoying cable paywall restrictions, implementing heavy handed and generally terrible advertising, often sensationalizing coverage, avoiding controversial subjects during broadcasts, and streaming efforts that range from clumsy to scattershot.

Not too surprisingly, years of this continues to have a profound drag on viewer numbers, which are worse than ever:

"Through Tuesday, an average of 12.2 million people watched the Olympics in prime-time on NBC, cable or the Peacock streaming service, down 42 percent from the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. The average for NBC alone was 10 million, a 47 percent drop, the Nielsen company said."

And this was with Comcast/NBC's attempt to goose ratings by jumping right to Olympics coverage before the Super Bowl postgame celebrations had barely started. This year's ratings were also impacted by doping scandals, COVID, an Olympics location that barely had any snow, and disgust at the host country's human rights abuses:

"One woman on Twitter proclaimed the Olympics were “over for me. My lasting impression will be fake snow against a backdrop of 87 nuclear reactors in a country with a despicable human rights record during a pandemic. And kids who can look forward to years of therapy.”

While the Olympic veneer might not be what it used to be, you still have to think Comcast could boost viewership by exploiting the internet to broaden and improve coverage and provide more real-time live coverage of all events, while bundling it in a more coherent overall presentation. After all, they've only had two decades to perfect the formula.

Filed Under: olympics, ratings
Companies: comcast, nbc

Olympics Copyright Insanity Rules Again: Gold Medal Winner Blocked From Sharing Her Own Victory

from the the-olympic-gold-in-copyright-abuse-goes-to dept

Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica won both the women's 100 meter and 200 meter gold medals at the Olympics this year, and then did the super piratey thing of... excitedly posting snippets of her victories to Instagram, which responded by blocking her account for copyright violations. She wrote the following in a now deleted tweet:

“I was blocked on Instagram for posting the races of the Olympic because I did not own the right to do so."

We've already talked about the inanity of the way the Olympic Committee (and various broadcasters) abuse copyright to shut down viral moments, but this latest story really drives home a separate point: how copyright is not protecting the actual people who are entertaining the public. It is only being used to protect the giant organizations who profit from them.

After lots of people expressed reasonable outrage at this clearly ridiculous abuse of copyright law, Facebook claimed that it was all a mistake and her account was reinstated:

A spokesperson for Facebook told Reuters news agency that while the content had been removed, the suspension had been wrongly applied.

However, the International Olympic Committee seems to be insisting that Facebook did exactly the right thing:

“Rights Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) have the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympic Games,” the IOC told Reuters.

“This includes distribution on social media, where athletes are invited to share the content provided by the RHBs on their accounts but cannot post competition content natively. Should that occur, the removal of such content from social media platforms happens automatically.”

The IOC says that enforcing its intellectual property ensures it can redistribute as much money as possible back into sport.

Yeah, right. The fact that a top athlete shared her own victories on social media does not take away any money from anyone. If anything it gets people more interested in the sport. Or, really, more interested in the athlete -- but the IOC can't have that, because that might mean the athlete doesn't have to rely on the IOC to drip drip drip some tiny bit of money out, rather than taking its billions and giving it to Olympics officials.

Filed Under: copyright, elaine thompson-herah, olympics, ownership
Companies: facebook, instagram, international olympic committee, ioc

Despite 20 Years Of Experience, Comcast/NBC Still Sucks At Olympics Coverage

from the fourth-circle-of-hell dept

NBC (now Comcast NBC Universal) has enjoyed the rights to broadcast the US Olympics since 1998. In 2011, the company paid $4.4 billion for exclusive US broadcast rights to air the Olympics through 2020. In 2014, Comcast NBC Universal shelled out another $7.75 billion for the rights to broadcast the summer and winter Olympics in the US... until the year 2032. Despite years of practice, we've repeatedly noted how the company has done a consistently terrible job at its core responsibility as the holder of those rights: namely, showing people things they actually want to see in a way that isn't annoying.

For years Comcast has been criticized for refusing to air events live, spoiling some events, implementing annoying cable paywall restrictions, implementing heavy handed and generally terrible advertising, often sensationalizing coverage, avoiding controversial subjects during broadcasts, and streaming efforts that have ranged from clumsy to outright incompetent.

You'd think after 20+ years of criticism Comcast NBC would be doing a better job. Then again, if you know Comcast NBC at all, the fact that they aren't (and have been historically completely oblivious to that fact) probably isn't all that surprising. And of course this year is no different.

While the internet and streaming have allowed Comcast/NBC to offer overall more content to viewers, the way it's being presented continues to be scattershot as hell. The company's coverage jumps from event to event in a head-jerking manner, failing to present much of a cohesive narrative from hour to hour:

"...instead of sticking with single events throughout primetime – introducing them, highlighting the stakes and the protagonists, getting the viewer comfortable with the quirks of competition – NBC has deployed this vast arsenal of broadcast resources to spray America’s households with a kind of inescapable Olympic televisual vomit.

A meaningful tip of the hat to the editor that let "televisual vomit" show up in the pages of The Guardian. And the chaos comes despite the fact that Olympics planners in Tokyo have increasingly tried to schedule events to make them more coherent to audiences in different time zones, especially the west:

"NBC’s programming choices have been consistently bizarre, even more so when you consider that whole chunks of the schedule in Tokyo – for swimming above all, but also in the athletics – were specifically rejigged to cater to the American TV audience, and at several points it’s been unclear to all but the most obsessive Olympics watchers whether what’s on TV at night in the US is live or a replay."

Spend a few moments over at Reddit and you can also find just a general and profound audience confusion in terms of when things will be broadcast, how and where you can watch event follow ups, and what the hell is going on. And while Comcast having its own streaming app (Peacock) should ideally make things better, that doesn't seem to be the case either. Promises of "free coverage" (with ads) via the app haven't been fulfilled because this is Comcast, and Comcast wants to use the opportunity to upsell you to either a streaming subscription or a traditional cable TV subscription if you want to see anything other than celebrity quips:

"Peacock will broadcast the team gymnastics finals for both men and women for free, but to watch any of the men’s basketball coverage you must upgrade to Peacock Premium—which costs $4.99 a month (unless, again, you already have Xfinity Internet or a cable subscription). It’s another $5 to get rid of ads."

Like most things Comcast/NBC does (see: broadband), it still expects to make a profit off of the Olympics thanks to ads, partnerships, viewer tracking data, and sponsored deals. This despite a lack of competence, Peacock itself being a money loser, sagging traditional cable subscriptions, and dipping ratings. Which is why complaints about Comcast/NBC Olympics coverage are more Sisyphean than productive, and we'll all be back here complaining again in a few years.

Filed Under: nbc, olympics, peacock, programming
Companies: comcast, nbc, olympics, universal

Copyright Ruins Everything Again: How Dare A Sports Writer Get People Excited About The Olympics!

from the oh-stuff-it dept

Every few years, the Olympics comes along to remind us not so much about the power of personal triumphs in sports, but the vast overreach of copyright laws to control absolutely everything for no damn reason at all.

Over the weekend, a pretty amazing story came out of the Olympics. Dutch runner Sifan Hassan was entering the final lap in a 1,500 meter heat, when the runner in front of her tripped, leading Hassan to fall as well. Both runners were then way behind the rest of the pack, with just about 350 meters left to go. Somehow, Hassan got up, and passed 11 other Olympic runners to win the race.

The only reason I learned about this was because I saw a tweet by Sports Illustrated writer Chris Chavez that included a clip showing that final lap from the fall to the victory. That tweet went super viral. When I spotted it, it had thousands of retweets. Indeed, the NPR link I put above with the story suggests you watch it by linking to Chris's tweet. Of course, if you go there now this is what you'll see:

That missing tweet in the middle was the video.

It's unclear if it was NBC or the Olympics (or someone else?) who took it down, but either way this is ridiculous. Yes, you can argue that the copyright holder has a right to take it down, but even that seems debatable. This seems like a pretty clear case of fair use -- a reporter reporting on something.

But, even ignoring the fair use argument, this is just so stupid and pointless. Chavez was giving free advertising and promotion to an amazing moment at the Olympics. And it was going viral. Crazy viral. What kind of stupid landlord looks at someone giving them massive promotional value for free and says "we gotta stop that sorta thing!" The infatuation with ownership and control at the expense of word-of-mouth promotion makes no sense at all. It actively holds back interest in the event.

Filed Under: chris chavez, copyright, dmca, olympics, sifan hassan, takedowns, viral, word of mouth
Companies: nbc, olympics, twitter

Twitter & Facebook Want You To Follow The Olympics... But Only If The IOC Gives Its Stamp Of Approval

from the what-the-fuck-twitter? dept

It is something of an unfortunate Techdirt tradition that every time the Olympics rolls around, we are alerted to some more nonsense by the organizations that put on the event -- mainly the International Olympic Committee (IOC) -- going out of their way to be completely censorial in the most obnoxious ways possible. And, even worse, watching as various governments and organizations bend to the IOC's will on no legal basis at all. In the past, this has included the IOC's ridiculous insistence on extra trademark rights that are not based on any actual laws. But, in the age of social media it's gotten even worse. The Olympics and Twitter have a very questionable relationship as the company Twitter has been all too willing to censor content on behalf of the Olympics, while the Olympic committees, such as the USOC, continue to believe merely mentioning the Olympics is magically trademark infringement.

So, it's only fitting that my first alert to the news that the Olympics are happening again was hearing how Washington Post reporter Ann Fifield, who covers North Korea for the paper, had her video of the unified Korean team taken off Twitter based on a bogus complaint by the IOC:

And Twitter complied even though the takedown is clearly bogus. Notice Fifield says that it is her video? The IOC has no copyright claim at all in the video, yet they filed a DMCA takedown over it. The copyright is not the IOC's and therefore the takedown is a form of copyfraud. Twitter should never have complied and shame on the company for doing so. Even more ridiculous: Twitter itself is running around telling people to "follow the Olympics on Twitter." Well, you know, more people might do that if you weren't taking down reporters' coverage of those very same Olympics.

Oh, and it appears that Facebook is even worse. They're pre-blocking the uploads of such videos:

This is fucked up and both the IOC and Facebook should be ashamed. The IOC can create rules for reporters and can expel them from the stadium if they break those rules, but there is simply no legal basis for them to demand such content be taken off social media, and Twitter and Facebook shouldn't help the IOC censor reporters.

Filed Under: anna fifield, censorship, copyfraud, copyright abuse, dmca, korea, olympics, takedowns, video
Companies: facebook, ioc, twitter

IOC President Tosses Shade At Including eSports In Olympics Over Concerns About Violence And Doping

from the facepalm dept

You will recall that a few weeks back we discussed the Paris Olympic Committee's open attitude towards looking at eSports for inclusion in the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games. This refreshing stance from an Olympic committee was a welcome step in the eSports trend, although it came with no promises taht we would actually see eSports in Paris seven years from now. The IOC, as always, would have the final say, and we all knew the massive headwind eSports would face with the grandpappy Olympic committee: eSports aren't real sports. Hell, I'm sure many advocates for competitive gaming were already gearing up to fight that fight.

Unfortunately, it looks like the IOC is likely to turn its nose up at eSports for entirely different and far, far more stupid reasons. The first of those dumb reasons, according to IOC President Thomas Bach, will indeed have a familiar ring to gamers.

“We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people,” Bach told the South China Morning Post. “This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line.”

The Kotaku piece points out that Bach himself won the gold medal in 1976 for fencing. While nobody would want to make the claim that competitive fencing is violent, are we really to believe that fencing is less a simulacrum for violence than a video game? Not to mention that this blanket statement that video games are about violence at their core is simply wrong, even on the competitive eSports level. Many games of course include violence. But some do not. Bach himself went on to half-heartedly acknowledge this with a nod towards sports simluations that could perhaps still be included, but the very focus on violence is frustratingly dumb. After all, boxing, judo, karate and wrestling have been or are featured Olympic events, and all of them are clearly more "violent" than video games. And that sets aside sports like water polo, which are known to be physically brutal.

But violent or no, eSports athletes may find themselves not included in the Olympics over an even more laughable concern: doping.

Bach also pointed out that the esports industry remains an under-regulated space compared to traditional sports: “You have to have somebody who is guaranteeing you that these athletes doing video sports games are not doped, that they are following technical rules, that they are respecting each other.”

Okay, stop it. Nobody would claim that eSports is without its drug issues, but the IOC of all organizations keeping it out of the Games over doping concerns is as farcical as it gets. The IOC would tell you, I'm sure, that it is opposite eSports in being one of if not the most regulated sporting event on the planet, and yet doping and PEDs are everywhere in the Olympics. The IOC and its event are no paragon of virtue when it comes to performance enhancing drugs. Listing that as a concern makes this whole thing seem like a joke.

So what is this pushback actually about? Likely money, as with all things the IOC. If it felt that eSports being included would be a major money-maker for the IOC, these concerns would melt away faster than a Usain Bolt dash. Once eSports reaches a certain popularity threshhold, which the trend seems to indicate is likely, they'll get their Olympic bid. It just might not be in 2024.

Filed Under: esports, olympics, paris, thomas bach, video games, violence
Companies: ioc

Paris Olympic Committee To Consider eSports For 2024

from the estadiums-are-cheap-at-least dept

While eSports, or competitive video gaming, has now been a thing for some time, it's rather swift rise in stature is still sprinting past milestones. Once a hobby sport relegated primarily to a few countries in Asia, eSports has since seen its inclusion in college athletics, in coverage on ESPN, and into the business models for real-life major sports leagues. If you were tracking what would be the next natural progression on the eSports legitimacy map, you wouldn't be surprised that the latest milestone reached is the consideration for making eSports a medal event in the Paris Olympic games scheduled for 2024.

The Paris Olympic bid committee will consider esports for inclusion as a medal event in the 2024 Olympic Games, according to Tony Estanguet, the committee’s co-president. Estanguet told the Associated Press that talks have been scheduled with the International Olympic Committee and with esports representatives “to better understand what the process is and why it is such a success.”

Estanguet also had some thoughts for esports skeptics out there: “We have to look at it because we can’t say, ‘It’s not us. It’s not about Olympics.’ The youth, yes they are interested in esport and this kind of thing. Let’s look at it. Let’s meet them. Let’s try if we can find some bridges.”

If you might be thinking that this consideration will meet the same swift death past niche competitions have met at Mount Olympics -- competitive poker for instance -- it's worth noting that the distinction here is the medal event, not the inclusion in Olympic games generally. The Rio games already showcased eSports competitions as exhibition matches and Asia's Olympic Council has already included medal events for eSports in the 2022 Asian Games. It seems whatever fortifications have been built against eSports gaining entry to the Olympic castle have already been splintered, making eSports' inclusion in 2024 all the more possible.

Still, we'll have to wait to find out the verdict on this one.

The Paris Olympics 2024 program will be finalized after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, so the committee will have years to consider the question and take note of the reception to these showcase competitions.

“There is some time to look at it, to interact, to engage,” said Estanguet. “The IOC will have the last say, if they want esports on the program.”

I for one am greatly looking forward to the great fustercluck that will be the IOC's enforcement of its claimed intellectual property rights over the broadcasting of competitions using copyrighted and trademarked gaming content specifically to a fanbase that, by its nature, knows how to use technology to subvert both. Should be fun.

Filed Under: 2024, esports, olympics

Court Tosses Company's Bid To Slap Down Olympics Social Media Restrictions Over Jurisdictional Issues

from the get-sued-first,-i-guess? dept

By now everyone should know that the IOC and USOC have completely perverted the concept of trademark law surrounding any mentioning of the Olympic Games. It's gotten so bad that the USOC has taken to threatening businesses that tweet out congratulatory messages to athletes, even when those businesses supported those athletes getting to the Olympics in the first place. The USOC seems to be under the impression that tweeting about the Olympics as a business is trademark infringement. It's not. It never was.

Yet those social media guidelines put forward by the USOC still exist and, coupled with the USOC's appetite for legal threats and lawsuits, that's typically enough to keep companies from challenging it on the matter. But one carpet cleaning business in Minnesota actually sued the USOC over the social media policy and its violation of that and other companies' free speech rights. Sadly that company, Zereorez, has had that suit tossed by the court on jurisdictional grounds, with the court essentially telling the company to come back after it's been sued by the USOC.

Zerorez, based in St. Louis Park, filed suit shortly before the Summer Olympics hoping to clarify whether the USOC could prohibit it from cheering for Minnesota athletes on social media. The company said it wanted to tweet “Congrats to the 11 Minnesotans competing in 10 different sports at the Rio 2016 Olympics!” but could not for fear of a lawsuit by the USOC.

U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright in Minneapolis dismissed the case April 4, ruling that, because the USOC never sued or even threatened to sue Zerorez, the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction.

Considering this suit was seeking a declaratory judgment that text Zerorez wanted to tweet out, but was afraid to because of the USOC guidelines, was ok, this can be viewed from the outside as a punt by the court. The judge's order goes to great lengths to outline what satisfies the jurisdictional requirements for a declaratory judgment. To anyone familiar with the USOC's antics, Zerorez's suit appears to satisfy them. Where the court disagrees is on the matter of whether or not an actual controversy exists in this case, with that controversy requiring that Zerorez first plan on engaging in what could be viewed as infringing behavior, which its tweet does in the context of the USOC's guidelines, and secondly that Zerorez has reason to expect to be sued by the USOC. Zerorez's filing pointed to other cases in intellectual property law in which declaratory judgment jurisdiction was accepted if the defendant had a prior history of filing or threatening to file infringement suits.

Here the court flatly declines to accept that standard, instead suggesting that Zerorez go ahead and get itself sued by the USOC if it wants to then protect its free speech rights.

If news reports of USOC's letters to other companies warning that only official sponsors of Team USA are permitted to use USOC's trademarks on their corporate social media channels create an actual controversy between USOC and Zerorez, a company with which USOC never communicated before this lawsuit, then any company that is not an official sponsor of Team USA could bring a declaratory-judgement action against USOC by asserting the same facts. Such a conclusion would eviscerate the actual-controversy requirement.

Here you see the catch-22 that small businesses face in light of the chilling effects of the USOC's antics. The USOC gets to bully smaller entities less capable of defending themselves in court, but escapes the court when a company wants to get what is plainly free speech content declared legal and non-infringing. The choice left to companies via this ruling is: don't exercise your free speech rights, or go get sued first and then try to defend yourselves.

Which is beyond unfortunate and trends into being downright sad. If the USOC's guidelines bastardize trademark law, and they do, then that's the reason why so many companies would want to seek declaratory judgment that their free speech is kosher. The problem is the USOC, not the fact that Zerorez hasn't been sued yet.

Filed Under: declaratory judgment, free speech, olympics, social media, sponsorship, standing, trademark
Companies: usoc, zereorez

If You're Angry About Twitter Banning Someone 'Permanently' For Sharing Olympics GIFs, Blame Copyright Law

from the bad-law-creates-bad-ideas dept

Over on LinkedIn a guy named Jim Weber wrote about how he was banned permanently from Twitter because he shared a few GIFs from the Olympics.

It all started when I saw a GIF of her sublime first pass on the floor routine two weeks ago on the front page of Reddit. Wanting to share what an awesome moment this was, I downloaded the GIF and uploaded it to Twitter with these four words: "Aly Raisman: She's good."

[To be fully transparent, I also tweeted GIFs of this awesome Japanese wrestler celebrating with her coach and this incredible Perfect 10 by a Chinese diver during the games.]

I had read that the IOC was banning the press from using GIFs but I didn't see how that applied to me. Sure, I didn't have the rights to any footage at the Olympics — just like countless blogs and users don't have rights to the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA footage that they create GIFs out of and profit from every day.

Weber notes that he figured the worst that would happen is that those tweets would get taken down. Instead, his account was banned. Permanently (though, as it turned out later, not really). The story has gone pretty viral (on Twitter, naturally), with lots of people expressing anger at Twitter. It also appears that soon after the story started spreading, Twitter actually changed its mind and put back his account.

Here's the thing, though: if you want to get upset about this, don't get upset at Twitter. Get furious at parts of the DMCA and how some courts have interpreted it lately (and the International Olympic Committee -- it almost always deserves the anger that is pointed in its direction for its extreme protectionist/copyright policies). But remember, not too long ago, the ISP Cox lost big time in an important DMCA case, at the key issue that swayed the judge was the lack of a competent "repeat infringer policy." And what was one of the key things in that case? The fact that Cox didn't permanently ban people.

So if you're the legal team at Twitter, and you're keeping up on the caselaw, you better believe that you're going to make sure that you have a serious "repeat infringer policy" that kicks people off permanently for sharing a few pieces of copyright-covered material. Because even as basically everyone is saying "what? you shouldn't lose your account permanently for sharing a few happy gifs from the Olympics," in court it would be spun as "Twitter has a history of failing to reasonably implement a repeat infringer policy, as required by the DMCA in Section 512(i)(1)(A)." And if the Olympics or whoever gets a judge like the one in the Cox case, who doesn't seem to care much about whether people use the internet or not, Twitter might just lose.

Yes, Twitter probably could have handled this a lot better, but if you want to get angry, get angry that copyright law is so fucked up these days.

Oh, also, this is a decent reminder to be at least somewhat careful about relying too much on anyone's platform. Weber claims to recognize that...

Not only do I not plan to start a new Twitter account, I'm hesitant to post anything to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat with the knowledge that they can and will permanently shut down your account with the snap of their fingers.

... except his post about all of this is published on LinkedIn, which is really no different than any of the other social media platforms he listed above. So there's a bit of irony in declaring that he's hesitant to post on social media platforms... on a social media platform.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, jim weber, olympics, repeat infringer policy
Companies: twitter

Comcast/NBC Tone Deafness, Not 'Millennials' To Blame For Olympics Ratings Drop

from the we'll-adapt-when-we-damn-well-feel-like-it dept

Olympics watchers repeatedly begged Comcast for live opening ceremonies, more live events, less host prattle, and fewer ads ahead of the recent games in Rio. What did Comcast deliver instead? A smorgasbord of abysmal bloviation, tape delays, and so many advertisements that many people stopped watching in disgust. As a result, the Rio Olympics were the lowest rated Summer Olympics since 2000, with average viewership down 17% and an overall audience that was 25% smaller than 2012 in the 18-to-49 demo.

We've already noted how a big reason was Comcast/NBC's absolute refusal to actually listen to paying customers and heed lessons from the cord cutting era. But a Bloomberg headline this week proudly crowed that Millennials were somehow to blame for the slide. Amusingly, the piece cites a comment from NBC exec Steve Burke, who last June described a scenario he said would be a "nightmare":

"We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it."

That is, so we're clear, an NBC exec predicting that if NBC's Olympics ratings dropped, it would be the fault of Millennials living in a bubble -- not possibly due to anything NBC did. And with ratings dropping from 17 to 25%, Burke's nightmare scenario effectively came true. NBC is quick to point out that streaming was actually up, but that wasn't able to help an overall dive in ratings. And while Comcast/NBC is quick to insist it's adapting to consumer demand, people young and old found Olympic streaming to be an annoying and cumbersome experience littered with paywalls, delays, authentication issues, and other headaches:

"I’m sure NBC were patting themselves on the backs for how easy it would be to watch online this year, but that’s only true for cable subscribers, a slowly shrinking percentage of the US population, especially for Millennials. The reason NBC is losing Millennials to other platforms for entertainment is because all of those platforms have lowered the barriers to enjoy the programming. I can sign up for Hulu, Netflix, and HBO nearly in an instant. Oh, and did I mention they’re all ad free (with a premium on Hulu)?

Had NBC offered the entire Olympic Platform for a small fee (less than $10), they probably would have seen their Millennial numbers skyrocket. Hell, they could have charged $5 more for an “Ad Free” presentation and padded their pockets even more. But instead, they relied on the old dying models of traditional broadcast network and revenue models of years past, and it bit them in the ass.

Why is streaming so clunky and difficult? Because most cable industry streaming efforts are designed to give the illusion of innovation, flexibility and adaptation, without actually providing any of these. Why? Because offering a truly easy, inexpensive online streaming service (Olympics or otherwise) would cannibalize the traditional cable TV cash cow. As such, easy, flexible and inexpensive streaming remains an intentional afterthought, and will until cord cutting finally reaches critical mass. In short, like so many legacy industries, pay TV won't truly adapt until the house is fully engulfed in flames.

Filed Under: coverage, millenials, olympics, ratings, time delay
Companies: nbc universal