Olympics Finally Here!

Olympics Finally Here! And Of Course NBC Blows Coverage... U.S. gymnast Kevin Tan performs at the rings at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008. Earthquake survivors watch the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in the tent they they have converted in to a hair salon, after losing their business on the May 12th earthquake, in temporary camp for earthquake survivors in Leigu, Sichuan, China, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2008. As the opening ceremonies began for China's Olympics, even the region savaged by the May earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 and left more than 5 million homeless were reveling in the moment.Henry Blodget Fri Aug 8, 3:54 PM ET


NBC is trying, I'll give them that much. They've covering 2,200 hours of Olympic events live online (albeit not the stuff you want to watch). They're also covering 3,600 hours of Olympic events on TV (albeit mostly taped). In other words, they're producing more Olympics coverage than has ever been produced before. But they're still producing it for themselves and their legacy TV business, not you.


How would NBC cover the Olympics if they put you first and didn't have a legacy business to protect? They would:

* Make NBCOlympics. com a comprehensive schedule of each day's events, with a link to a live video feed of each. All events. 100% coverage. Searchable by day or by event with a simple toggle. For events that NBC itself is not covering, the link could go to a partner company's video. In exchange, NBC could give partners access to its own video. Note that NBC currently comes at its Olympics schedule from exactly the opposite direction--by starting with the NBC networks and then describing what each will show on any given day and time. Hate to break it to NBC, but viewers couldn't care less which network they watch on. They just want to know how/where to watch the events they want to watch. So this thinking should be inverted. (Full schedule of coverage here)

* Note when the live feed is/was also available on TV and where/when. If it's on TV, most folks would prefer to watch it there, as long as it's not cluttered with ads and crappy commentary. If TV is still more profitable than online (it is), NBC should encourage web viewers to turn on their TVs. Or, better yet, watch both simultaneously.

* Make NBCOlympics a wikipedia-style start-page for games, athletes, news, blogs, stats, betting, etc. This instead of the me-too "Olympics" destination it is now.

As it is, I and others will be spending most of the Olympics cursing NBC for forcing us to watch the Olympics according to their schedule and style, not ours.

In response, I'll also happily try to take advantage of the first truly global medium to find other sources for the video feeds (this worked marvelously for the opening ceremonies). Four years from now, I hope NBC finally figures that out.


Read more HuffPost coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games


See Also:
How To Watch The Olympics LIVE ONLINE



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