With great power comes great responsibility

Greetings again old friends of the blogosphere.  Today I come to you on a topic that is of timely importance to a large amount of people around the world:  the Olympics.  Specifically, in the United States, getting information about the Olympics from finding schedules to results to video leaves us largely at the mercy of NBC, with the exclusive rights to Olympics coverage in the States.

There has been a lot of controversy and criticism of NBC with these rights, which as it turns out, come with great responsibility.  The Olympics have widespread appeal, which means that while the holder of the media rights will undoubtedly win in the ratings, it will also be expected to deliver up to expectations, which are set quite high.

Let us look at just a few of the controversies.  Broadcasting the Olympics used to be straight-forward:  show a few things during the day because well, you could.  But most things could be shown in primetime, 1) because that's when most people were watching TV, 2) with the Olympics being held in various parts of the world, it was almost always taped, and 3) No one really knew the result until you broadcasted it anyway.

The problem is, we now live in the day of social media, and in a global society.  Other parts of the world are no longer a distant mystery because we are all connected via the internet, and news is reported in real time via CNN newsfeeds, NY Times email alerts, and Twitter.  True, there are still folks who will go home from work and curl up to watch the events in primetime, content with knowing that it is not broadcast live.  But chances are, with all the news outlets they bump into throughout the day, they still found out who won the event, spoiling the surprise before they even had a chance to walk into the door at night.  Even in the last Olympics in Beijing, Twitter was just a baby and didn't have nearly the usage it does today.

It's a different ballgame now.

NBC gave it a half-assed effort.  They allowed you to watch events online.  But you had to have a cable subscription (which is another issue--understandable that they have to make money somehow, but is that really the spirit of the games?  That only the folks with cable can watch, and everyone else is screwed?).  And some high-popularity events, like gymnastics, were still unavailable online so that NBC could hold them hostage for higher primetime ratings.  But again, you probably already knew the result before you got a chance to watch it, even if you tried to watch it live and were denied.  So, in effect, instead of making everyone happy by covering all its bases, NBC made everyone furious by only doing everything halfway.

It's a tricky scenario to figure out, but it's fair to be harsh on NBC because they are a media company, and this is a media issue.  They took on the responsibility by paying big dollars for the exclusive rights, and as a media company, they should be able to rise to the challenge of mastering a multi-channel media experience.

As a shout-out to someone who describes this disappointment far better than I can, I give you this satire article from the New Yorker.  Enjoy.

And in case you still aren't sure what the fuss is all about, here is more.