Delay means Olympic-size frustrations

I have sat back and watched the past two weeks as more and more Olympics viewers are figuring out something I learned 16 years ago while viewing the Atlanta games: NBC doesn’t care about sports fans. The Peacock figures it already has us in its back pocket.

Actually, I haven’t really sat back. I have been following the #nbcfail hashtag on Twitter, where what NBC says is a loud minority has been chronicling the stupid decisions and mistakes that treating the Olympics like a reality show has caused the network. I have been contributing to the discourse on occasion. For those who care, in my opinion tape-delaying anything in 2012 is stupid, but putting soccer and basketball on the former Versus and not breaking for commercials in-game (or schmaltzy features at all) is brilliant.

I thank NBC Sports Network that it is a Ryan Seacrest-free zone. When the online streaming works, such as at 1 o’clock in the morning, it is great. Other than that, I cannot think of anything good to say. Marquee events that the rest of the world -- an audience of some 2 billion -- can see live are postponed six and sometimes 12 hours in the east, and another three in the west. Friends of mine don’t want “spoilers” because they think they can avoid finding out the results for that length of time.

The breaking point for me was a poll that showed a strong majority in favor of BOTH live and tape-delay presentations. This sounds great to me. Let me watch it live on the big TV in the living room when it happens and show it to the 9-to-5ers after dinner if that is the way they want it. According to the Gallup poll conducted Aug. 4-5, 59 percent of those questioned agree while just 12 percent of respondents favored NBC's current approach. Another 17 percent of respondents favored only live coverage, so that means nearly 80 percent want access to the events as they happen.

How does NBC respond to this? Dick Ebersol, who oversaw the Peacock’s Olympic coverage through the 1990s and the first decade of the new century, told blogger Joe Posnanski two days ago that the network doesn’t see this as a sports event. Ebersol told Posnanski, a former Kansas City Star sports columnist:

“People talk about how we should treat this like sports? You know, we’re getting an 18 rating some nights. Do you know what rating we would get if this was not under the banner of the Olympics? We’d be lucky to get a 1 rating for some of these sports.”

Yes, their ratings are great. A big reason why is that the network shuts off all other options on my HDTV by 5 p.m. (since I live in California). But when the winners and losers are determined after the money is counted, people will point fingers at how wrong-headed NBC was in the grand scheme of things. The Olympics ARE sports, they ARE news. And when something smells like day-old news, it is.

Instead, the network relies on a heavy mix of swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball, diving and athletics. Hours after the events are over, editors slice and dice the actual competition, maybe even create some fake drama,  add a healthy dose of feature stories, and you have the perfect recipe for non-sports fans. As for those who want to actually see the events without all the distractions, they’ll watch like sheep because they have no other option.

But for those paying attention, what NBC is doing is not day-old news, it’s decades-old. In 1996, the network used what it called a “plausibly live” broadcast to delay swimming events by a couple of hours (you could still see daylight around the outdoor swimming venue at 10 p.m. Really?) and that famous Kerri Strug vault that may or may not have lifted the U.S. women to gymnastics gold had taken place earlier in the afternoon, not at 11:30 p.m. And this was for an Olympics that was in a time zone where live coverage was not only possible, but plausible.

So for those who think things will be different when NBC broadcasts the Olympics from Brazil (which shares a time zone with New York and Atlanta) in 2016, who think that #nbcfail will ultimately change things, I offer the example of Atlanta and every other Summer Games since then when I say NBC doesn’t care about sports fans' opinions in this matter.