Let me start off by saying I love NBC. It is by far the station I watch the most during the year. They have a vast majority of my favorite shows and are generally pretty relevant with their news programs. That is why I was so surprised they dropped the ball like they did with their Olympic coverage.
Last night Megan and I rushed home from dinner with friends to make sure we caught the Women’s Gymnastic Finals, Megan’s favorite event in the Olympics. We got home, turned on the TV, and luckily it hadn’t started yet. We then went on to check our email and work on some projects on our computers while we waited for the event. I had just stepped into the office when Megan shouted, “I’m seeing results online, why aren’t they showing it on TV?”
I checked it out, and sure enough, NBC was posting live scores to their website, but we were seeing Men’s Beach Volleyball on the TV. The local coverage was being delayed to adjust for the time zone. I looked around NBC.com for a live feed, but nothing. They offered no live feeds online of their primetime events. I looked around the internet for other live feeds. CBC was clever enough to block their internet feed to users outside of Canada. I tried a YouTube hack Jesse shared from Valleywag, but YouTube had since patched the hole. Frustrated, I finally went back to NBC.com to send them an email and in doing so, I saw the results of the very event I was trying to watch posted on their main page! Ridiculous.
Luckily, Megan hadn’t seen the results (although the swimming results were spoiled for her by the CNN feed on her home page), so we stayed up to watch the delayed coverage, but every time I saw that “Live” bug in the top right corner of the screen, my blood boiled.
I took this picture at 10:40pm Pacific time. At this point, the US is warming up for their first event, but in reality, the event has long been completed, and I have already seen the results. Notice the “Live” bug floating prominently next to the NBC Olympic logo. There’s no indication anywhere that this “Live” feed has been delayed to compensate for time differences.
This is unacceptable. No other live sports coverage is handled this way. They would never dream of doing this with Football. Why did they decide to delay the mother of all international sporting events? It doesn’t make any sense.
I was okay with the delayed Opening Ceremonies, I am okay with the small amount of events available to watch on NBC. I am okay with them spreading the coverage over their partner stations and the internet. I am even okay with them breaking for commercials. I understand that they are still trying to make money. What I am not okay with is delaying a live feed just to put the coverage in line with the local primetime slot. No other sporting event is handled this way, not even Nascar.
I did not check to see if this problem just affected Las Vegas or if it stretched across the entire Pacific Time Zone, so please, leave a comment if you’ve noticed the delay in your area too. If it has, send an email over to NBC to complain along with me.
Update: Gizmodo has some workarounds that might help you get a live stream online. Let me know if any of these work. I’ve lost all faith in NBC.
Tags: Articles, las-vegas, Live, media, NBC, Olympics, tv
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I’m not sure I could pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but I have become a full blown Media Whore. I think it may have started the day I created a MySpace page. See, at first it was just a way to keep tabs on my little sisters and stalk my little brother, but then I started to spruce things up a bit. I made a redneck page, and then an Emo page (that one was fun… stupid Emo), and then thought up a million other secret identities with which I could incessantly mock every clichéd stereotype I saw in the last high school I subbed at until Tom and his band of MySpace minions got miffed because of my magnificent mockery of their millions of multitasking monkeys and barred me from all forms of arbitrary alliteration.
Then, something strange happened. Things got serious. Or at least as serious as I am capable of faking. I put up some real pictures, gave myself a headline, listed a couple of interests, and officially entered the world of MySpace. It was like my very own MySpace bar mitzvah. Except I’m not Jewish. Although my MySpace page very well could be. I have no idea. I decided to give it the freedom to choose for itself. The point is, I had become a MySpace man.
And so it went for a long time. I added my MySpace friends, left my MySpace messages, and even made my very own MySpace blog (see what I did there?). Everything was pretty normal, except for the fact that I had become one of the very people I wanted to mock, but I had come to terms with that by completely blocking it from my mind and guarding it with a magical little tree frog. His name is Froggy McFunklestein. He’s Irish. He has a drinking problem, but it has nothing to do with his nationality. He has a very high stress job, a lot of responsibility. I think he might be Jewish. Funklestein… sounds Jewish anyway. I’ll have to ask him some time. Maybe I could set him up with my Myspace page. Where was I? Oh yes, whores.
A while later I was perusing a fan page of one of my favorite bands, The Dave Matthews Band, and I discovered that their bass player, Stefan Lessard, had started a blog. Now, I have always loved the bass guitar and always wanted to learn to play it. I always take bass when air banding to 80s hair bands. I decided to check it out. It fascinated me. This guy is a pretty normal, laid back guy with his own normal family, who just happens to be the bass player for one of the biggest touring bands in the nation. He talked about starting a MySpace page. I had a MySpace page. He is now in my “Top 8.”
A little while later I was looking at new movie trailers and decided to check out Zach Braff’s new movie, The Last Kiss. See, I’m a huge fan of Garden State. It was the first movie that I really connected with in a long time. Also, Scrubs is one of my favorite TV shows (it would be right behind Arrested Development if the morons at FOX hadn’t cancelled what could’ve been the greatest TV show of the millennium… the MILLENNIUM!!!), so I clicked on the link to the trailer, which took me to ZachBraff.com. Apparently he had set up a blog too (what kind of megalomaniac sets up a website named after himself?). Anyway, his blog fascinated me too. He basically spouts off whatever is on his mind like it’s some kind of blog or something. He talked about setting up a MySpace page too. He is also now in my “Top 8.”
I started to feel like I had crossed some sort of line. Not only do I now have two people in my friends list that I don’t know, they’re two famous people. I started to feel like I was Penny Lane in Almost Famous, except not for real, some kind of MySpace version. I don’t know why I did it. I started to rationalize it to myself. See, it’s not like they were really promoting or selling anything on these sites. Well, not really anyway. I mean Zach Braff has ads for his new movie all over his page and Stefan Lessard’s blog is on his company’s website, but I’m okay with that. It’s just a place where they can clear their mind and let people know what they’re up to.
Then I crossed a line I can never uncross. It’s like mocking some little boy until he cries because he’s weird looking. Only you wait until he’s talking to the girl he likes. And then she starts laughing too because he’s a little whiny baby. There’s no coming back from that. That kid’s going to develop a complex. And then probably become a comedian. And make millions of dollars telling jokes about girls laughing at him. Or shoot himself in the head for not making millions of dollars and being such a failure. I put a banner for The Last Kiss on my MySpace page. I feel so dirty. It was for a contest. Five people out of Zach Braff’s thousands of friends that put the banner on their page get a free autographed poster for the movie. It’s free. You can’t buy it in stores. Maybe on Ebay. Is that so wrong? He seems like a nice guy. It’s more like he hired me as a special promoter for his new movie, like I’m part of some MySpace street team. He hired me with the chance to win an autographed poster. I am such a whore.
Tags: arrested-development, Articles, blog, dave-matthews-band, emo, media, Movies, myspace, scrubs, stefan-lessard, zach-braff
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