It’s funny the last post I wrote up about the Olympics, I was talking in general terms; things I’ve seen in past Olympics and felt I could expect in this Olympics. Not only were all my predictions right, NBC buried the needle in failure.
My absolute favourite twitter hashtag of late is #NBCfail. I’ve gone a little overboard with my comments but as they say, it’s easy to act when you’ve got great material.
So what the hell NBC? How could a network who brought us Joey screw up this badly?
For one thing, social media hasn’t been around for very long; so as a culture, we haven’t really been checking in with each other and comparing notes. There’s a lot of talk this Olympic’s coverage is pretty bad. But what’s not said as much is every Olympics coverage is bad.
If you want a smoking gun, you need not look any further than old school journalism; the kind of journalism pounded into NBC news for the past 60 or so years. It’s not sufficient to say there was a fire, oh no. First, you have to set the scene, then you have to describe the people who were affected, what they were doing before the fire, you have to show their reactions to the aftermath, and then finally how they got on with their lives months later in relation to the fire. If you need proof this is the NBC model, just watch an episode of the Today Show or Dateline. Sometimes, the story is so juicy, the network will air one of these segments on their own and spread them out for months. With the Olympics, each athlete gets their own bio, their own rags to riches story, and if you cry on camera, so much the better. All these precious factoids are heartwarming tedious time-wasters sucking all the time, energy, and excitement from the actual games. (Hint: if you want something fun, how about take a cue from my generation and try Olympic pop-up video. Trust me, it’ll be a hit!)
Bob Costas: I’m what holds this place together.
So NBC is in the business of storytelling. Is it any wonder why Bob Costas, the Ken Burns of sports coverage, is the lead Olympic journalist year after year.
NBC is in last place. When NBC was on top, whenever that was, its heavy hitters were Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Matthew Perry, and Matt Lauer. No one wants to bring Jerry back into the spotlight; the last time they did was during the 2010 Olympics when NBC thought it was a great idea to cut off coverage of the closing ceremonies and debut Seinfeld’s reality show, the Marriage Ref. So Jerry’s out; that leaves Leno, Perry, and Lauer, just like it was back in 1994. When you’re living in the past, it’s a little easier to understand why NBC is so out of touch, and so easy to defend tape delays.
Tape delays work in a vacuum; when there is no other information coming in and there is absolutely no way you can be spoiled about who won the games you’re about to watch. Long before there was Twitter though, there was your local news, there was the nightly news, and there was CNN. All these news sources are just sitting on a juicy tidbit and why should NBC have all the fun? The non-NBC news media wants to show their news chops and spread some information too, to hell with spoilers. So yes, social media is powerful and ubiquitous but it’s not the vacuum killer NBC wants you to think it is.
NBC has money to make. Once again, they’re in last place. They’re taking all that Seinfeld money, laying it on the table, and letting it ride. They’re hoping to gain viewers back to the Today Show now that they unceremoniously axed Ann Curry and replaced her with Sequoia Guthrie. Realistically though, NBC knows it probably won’t make money with return viewership. The answer: ads. When I worked radio, our boss was from Texas and she bought the station because she thought it’d be fun to have a radio station. She wanted to make it profitable; she had a sizable sales team for advertising and as a result, there were more ads than music on most days. Watching the Olympics, I can’t help but think back. Every three minutes, Olympics excitement be damned, there’s a stream of commercials to make you wonder, what game was I watching again? I’m convinced that’s why the games are on Bravo since that’s their network model anyway.
NBC’s reading Twitter and they could give a shit about your opinion. We all know the games could be made better; they could appear live and uninterrupted. If you want bios, hell the two weeks before the games could be a series of interviews and specials designed to help you get to know the athletes. It could be more like the BBC. There’s no money in that. NBC wants guaranteed viewership so they can force its ads on you. That’s why no one is in any hurry to fix their “you have to have a cable subscription to make it work” app. That’s why NBC keeps bringing up the viewership numbers for the opening ceremonies. Question though: are they satisfied viewers? You can watch a thing and hope it’ll improve. I don’t know how many movies I’ve sat through thinking “this thing is bound to get better” only to throw a brick at the TV once the movie rolls its closing credits. (And speaking of things people wanted to throw a brick at…). NBC has us by the collective short hairs and will keep on with its mantra, “you say you don’t like it, but you’re watching it”.
Yes, we’re watching the Olympics. Collectively, we all love the Olympics and what they stand for. We want to participate and feel the camaraderie the games bring out in all of us. We want to root for all the athletes, not just the ones from the USA. We already look terribly Amerocentric and this isn’t helping matters. While I’m on the subject, show us all the games! All my life, I’ve never been able to see a full fencing match or equestrian event. Bottom line, as viewers, it would be criminal to turn our back on the Olympics. So, NBC don’t even. Don’t insinuate I can’t feel two things at once: although I love to watch the Olympics and feel deeply for the things they stand for, I still have to wade through your outmoded corporate greedy bullshit and a LOT of us are pissed off about it.
Ksenia Afanasyeva, a Russian gymnast, was the reigning world champion for the floor exercise. She delivered a strong performance on Tuesday, until she crashed on her knees on her final pass.
What’s even more frustrating is how NBC is sculpting the Olympics into something they believe is newsworthy. More of the old NBC journalism. As a result, you have incidents not even being aired, such as those surrounding Russian gymnast Ksenia Afanasyeva. This was “a decision that critics said it made to create more suspense around Team USA“.
NBC is refusing to air a lot of the athletes who don’t belong to Team USA.
“Apparently the only countries competing in gymnastics are Russia, China, and the US. Remember when the Olympics used to be exciting?” — Martha Plimpton, August 3, Twitter
I think NBC is threatened by citizen journalists who question the news organization and decide to reject the corporate voice in favor of one of their own. Personally, I don’t think an army of bloggers is a viable alternative to corporate journalism as too many voices become anarchy. NBC should be happy to hear we need moderated, professional journalism, but we need to temper it with, among other things, 21st century demands in order to keep up with the times and the technology.
NBC’s tape delay creates all the buffer it needs to edit, comment, and deliver the 
games. Of course, NBC is indignant to it all; angry anyone would question what it was doing for its viewers. What’s worse is there just seems to be something sinister in the air. #NBCfail was a trending Twitter topic for the first day, now it’s all but vanished. Twitter has even taken a hit after it suspended Guy Adams’ account for appearing to have posted an NBC executive’s personal email address (he didn’t, the email could be readily obtained on the public NBC corporate website). It’s a nice little microcosm: in the midst of the Olympics, NBC crafts a heartwarming adversity story, gives us some cranky commentary, and after a one day delay, we finally get our happy ending.
What’s hopeful is NBC is being called out on some of its more ridiculous stunts. Most notable is NBC’s shoddy treatment of Gabby Douglas.
Then of course, there’s the thing where Bob Costas is talking about Gabby Douglas; Costas goes to commercial, and the commercial is for NBC’s new show Animal Kingdom. The commercial depicts a monkey on gymnastic rings. Here’s the story: NBC called racists after ‘Animal Kingdom’ ad following Gabby Douglas victory. Now I had the video below; I felt if you saw the material unedited, you could decide for yourself if NBC just made an unfortunate broadcasting error, or, if you felt something else. If you click on the video, however, you’ll see the YouTube user’s account has been terminated. For those keeping score at home, that’s Big Brother: 1, Free Speech: 0.
NBC deserves its criticism; there’s the hope when fans express themselves in a passionate articulate way, they will be listened to and validated. Its the way we make the world a better place. But all too often you get some half-assed justification and you end up feeling kinda like you’re listening to this guy:
Epilogue
The last week of the Olympics circled the drain just as hard as week’s prior. In the background, we had this little gem, called ‘Bodies in Motion’:
Despite the creepy, pervy nature of the video, NBC received a backlash over the video and decided to pull it.
The day before the closing ceremonies; NBC decided it would be a great idea to give a 
Tom-Brokaw narrated World War II documentary that felt as long as the actual war.
Once the games finally did get under way, NBC broke to commercial unabashedly, sometimes right in the middle of races. Entire sporting events were condensed to 5 competitions with the network announcing only the winner, no such announcements on silver or bronze, unless the Americans won.
John McEnroe asked Usain Bolt if he knew who Elvis Presley was, saying he was the American Bob Marley. He then asked if he knew who was Mohammed Ali and went on to explain the “rope a dope” as a framing device to see if the Bolt was doing that to his competitors. Meanwhile, Bolt’s teammates stood behind the limelight wondering if they might get to feast on Bolt’s scraps. That was the way it was for most of the relay teams: there was only room enough for one media darling, the rest served as nothing more than a nice peach colored background for the cameras to blur out.
Finally, the closing ceremonies. NBC’s coverage showed mostly no athletes. Just like the opening ceremonies, the Macy’s Day parade-feel pervaded, with Bob Costas and Ryan Seacrest filling every moment with their commentary. Nothing could be enjoyed because everything was digested and filtered through their eyes. At one point, Seacrest even announced the surprise guest of Eric Idle, moments before his actual reveal. During the handoff from London to Brazil, Costas goes into elaborate detail about Brazil, its people, its culture — almost as if we had never seen these people before in say, a volleyball tournament just days before.
Animal Practice
Of course, the closing ceremonies didn’t appear live as everyone wanted; instead, the network broadcasted an hour long retrospective the hour before. Since they cut time into the closing ceremonies, acts had to be chopped. Unknowns such as Ray Davies and Muse (who sang the actual theme for the 2012 games) hit the cutting room floor. Adding insult to injury, the Who was pre-empted for an hour, while NBC ran the pilot for its newest show, the Marriage Ref Animal Practice.
http://www.sportsgrid.com/nfl/bob-costas-celebration-lecture/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246569/
http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/justin-kirk-animal-practice-nbc.jpg
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