Is it live or is it NBC-plausibly-live?
Despite NBC’s claims that more of the Olympics would be carried “live” this year from Beijing, fans are spending extra energy to avoid learning results in real time, before the NBC telecasts.
Don’t leave my home page up on the computer, I’ve been begging my family. Now that NBC’s gotten me interested in Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers and the concept of beach volleyball in Latvia, I don’t want to know what happened before I see it.
If you live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, the “live” bug in the corner of the screen is untrue.
As previously reported, in Denver, tape-delayed events are the rule.
When NBC says there’s more live programming than ever (roughly 75 percent of the 3,600 hours of coverage is “live”) they mean live on the East Coast.
The 14-hour time difference, Denver-Beijing, means holding back information. Lots of competitions were moved to the mornings in Beijing just so the events would occur in prime time in the Eastern U.S. Other competitions are shown on tape delay — a fact the network disguises when possible.
A few embarrassing statements of truth by NBC broadcasters have given away the trick. In other cases, misstating the truth (or not pointing out the obvious) has served the NBC ratings push at the expense of reality. Matt Lauer talked about the opening ceremonies, for instance, as if they would be happening “tonight,” when in fact they were underway in a venue nearby. Better to be forthcoming about the broadcast logistics.
So far, the only icky xenophobic moment I caught was on KUSA-Channel 9, when anchor Ward Lucas made fun of the food, exotic to American palates, available on the Beijing street. Just stop after asking whether the snake really tastes like chicken.
KUSA reports over 350,000 Denver area households tuned in Sunday night for women’s gymnastics and men’s swimming.
Other Olympics TV notes
. Englewood-based Dish Network struck an agreement with NBC Universal to carry two specialty sports networks during the 2008 Olympics from Beijing. The 24-hour-a-day high-definition soccer channel and basketball channel were added to the Dish lineup late last week after Comcast declined to carry the channels.
Dish also picked up the Mandarin Chinese and Korean language networks devoted to Olympics coverage.
The network’s interactive service is also in play for Olympics coverage, offering highlights and on-demand programming.
Additionally the multiple-screen showcase, “mosaic,” is showing numerous competitions at once. “Dish Network’s iTV mosaic is an excellent platform to showcase NBCU’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by giving customers a unique viewing experience that allows them to watch four live events and two highlight channels or select one channel for full-screen viewing,” said Michael Kelly, executive vice president of Dish Network.
NBC, meanwhile, boasted that the weekend’s coverage from Beijing was on track to become the most- watched Olympics in history.
Through two days NBCU drew a record 114 million total viewers (across the various NBC-related networks), or 4 million more than Atlanta in 1996. This is now “the most watched Olympics in history and nearly 20 million more than Athens (95 million),” NBC said, citing Nielsen Media Research.
Showcasing swimmer Michael Phelps in prime time helped the network capture viewers and that strategy remains in place for tonight and Wednesday. More than 28 million viewers tuned in for the final hour of prime time Saturday, which included Phelps’ first Beijing gold medal win.
Said NBC commentator Dan Hicks, “Phelps is Tiger (Woods) in a bathing suit.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
