My problem isn't just the delay, it's the fact that they were pretending the rest of the world does not exist.
The NBC "newscasters" were lying on air, saying things like "the big question now is who will be lighting the olympic torch," "the opening ceremony will begin in 2 hours" (when it was already over!), "in three hours time, the debate will be on as to whether the London or Beijing ceremony was nicer, we have the world has no idea what surprises are in store," and so on and so forth. They're deliberately misleading their viewers, and it's disgusting.
I agree with this. Everyone knows it isn't live, but they want to watch a recording of the livestream as it happened because that's what's the most exciting. It's the same reason why so many people watch Steve Jobs' live keynotes after the fact even though they could just watch the video advertisements or look at the Apple store for the products at that point.
I think it's fair to assume that a Chicago news caster is speaking primarily to an American audience. Specifically, a Chicago audience. So even in that context they weren't being misleading. Relax a bit.
If one were to make the argument that NBC is the USA's worst major television network, with its manifold vapid sitcoms, wooden Leno show, terrible Notre Dame contract, general lack of relevant sports, and persistent butchering of the Olympic Games telecast, well... one would have the makings of a pretty good case.
Anyone who wants can get access to their streaming web. Just give them who your cable provider is, and your user name and password to that account so that they can verify that it is you.
OK. What about people like me? I wouldn't mind seeing some of the Olympics. I would like to show it to my son. But I never watch TV, and I do not have a subscription to any TV cable service. Can't I, I don't know, PAY THEM to get access to this 2 week event? Or maybe they can MAKE ME SIT THROUGH ADS to get it?
Apparently not. There is no such option. I'll just have to track down a friend who trusts me and has a cable account to login on my computer so that I can watch. Or else find an illegal stream. Or else just not watch.
Well, if you're willing to pay, couldn't you sign up for cable for one month? I agree, it's not our ideal and it's more overhead for you since you'll need to deal with installation, but it's not like it's impossible to pay to see the Olympics.
If I sign up for cable for one month, it will take several days before I actually get it, and then who knows how much longer before I wind up able to login through their process. What portion of the Olympics will I have missed?
Borrowing someone else's account seems more likely to happen.
Well, you could have planned ahead... it's not like this situation cropped up spontaneously. I bet months ago you knew the Olympics were starting today and you knew you didn't have a way to view them. Not judging or accusing, just sayin'.
I did this last time around. A guy had to come to my house, lay cable and leave a box under my TV - only so I could take it all back a month later. Comcast have have spammed me with roughly two "come back" letters a month ever since.
It blows my mind that in 2012 NBC won't take my money to let me watch this online. Presumably they think it's enough to make me buy a cable subscription. They're wrong. I just searched around and watched a glitchy pirated feed - wishing all the time they'd let me pay them $5-$10 for the real thing.
It's rather pathetic that the spontaneity we've come to incorporate as an essential part of our online culture is thrown out the window when it comes to the whims of the giant broadcasters. Maybe people didn't want to watch the show ahead of time, but changed their minds at the last minute. That's possible and desirable in nearly any other situation, but not the "look how much more important we big business sponsors are than you" games?
It's really unfortunate. I would pay $100 to have full coverage of the olympics streamed. Not to mention I have yet to find a good representation of the schedule. Everything is extremely difficult to track down.
I just watched the pirated BBC broadcast. I felt like something was missing, and then I figured it out. The stupid thing is that Americans are forced to watch the Olympics with 20 minutes of commercials per hour, while the rest of the world gets to watch it nearly commercial free. Why does the US citizen pay for the entire Olympics through the annoyance of commercials?
Presumably the BBC outbid other British channels in a competitive bidding process. I suspect that broadcasters in the rest of the world know that 20 minutes of commercials per hour is unacceptable, so they don't bid as much as our networks. EDIT: The only source I could find indicates that the BBC paid about $100 million for broadcast rights to these games. That's 1/10th of what NBC paid, or about 1/2 of the American fees on a per capita basis.
In many countries (including the United Kingdom) the amount of commercials that can be broadcasted per hour on terrestrial broadcast is limited by law or other regulations. The UK is special in that the biggest broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4) are all publicly owned.
Edit: as others have pointed out, ITV is not publicly owned, but Channel 4 (and obviously BBC) are.
The US used to be one of those countries until Ronald Reagan signed a bill removing restrictions.
"June 28, 1984: President Ronald Reagan signs 'The Cable Communications Act' into law. During his first term in office, President Ronald Reagan approved "The Cable Communications Act," groundbreaking legislation that, among other things, lifted time restrictions on television advertisements. The stage was now set for the long-form infomercial."
I would also add Sky as one of the biggest broadcasters, certainly by revenue. They are commercial pay TV with some advertising broadcasting on their own satellite platform but with some of their channels also available on cable and terrestrial. Not everyone has the Sky channels.
Yes BBC is fully public corporation of it's own unique type (Corporation by Royal Charter - I think). Largely license fee funded with the rest coming from its commercial arm selling content (mostly overseas) and also books, magazines and back catalogue content in the UK.
Channel 4 is a normal company but government owned. Funded by ad revenue.
ITV is mostly ad funded and fully commercial. It used to be a group of regional companies (a bit like US affiliates) but they have all merged to one big company.
Due to my job, I work a lot with these broadcasters, especially Channel 4. From what I can tell, even though they are commercially funded, the folks over there in Horseferry Road try to take their "publicly owned" status seriously and try to act with the "public interest" (whatever that means) in mind. For example, I know that at least unofficially, they try really hard to help and support small, independent producers.
>The UK is special in that the biggest broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4) are all publicly owned.
No, no, no. Only the BBC is 'publicly owned' (e: ok and channel 4 is although commercial- the point was definitely not ITV). They do have some regulatory requirements, though.
I believe that it is the last year of a pan-European deal between the IOC and the EBU/Eurovision which is the club of largely public service broadcasters from across Europe (quite widely defined not just the EU).
The BBC has just done its own deal for the next few Olympics with the IOC.
How much is the fee? I suspect if given the choice between fee or commercials, many would choose the fee. Sadly that choice doesn't exist here (in the US) :/
Most people do both in the US, don't they? Paying for cable and still getting ads.
When they brought in one of the early cable TV systems in Australia, I think a selling point was that they had very few commercials. That didn't last long, and these days it feels like they have more than free-to-air... So I don't bother - free-to-air and the internet is enough.
In Germany it’s €215.76 per year, so about $266. Similar, but I can’t help and feel that value for money is worse here. There is some real cool stuff the BBC does that just does not exist in Germany.
But it seems that the Olympics will get pretty great coverage, also on the web. (There were, e.g., streams with and without commentary available tonight.)
Which you can completely ignore, because the agents are just standard salesmen really - they have no special rights. It also costs you money to report that you don't have a TV, so the simplest way is just throw the notices straight into the bin.
Most of the sports channels aren't covered by the licence fee, you still have to pay for cable (or Satellite) for them. The Olympics are one of the few exceptions.
I don't find it so great; it's more than double what I pay for Netflix or Lovefilm, and I seem to be getting more use out of them overall. There's some good stuff on BBC but not that many shows I'm that excited about.
Also, iplayer is not great. The whole business of having to watch shows within a week is, frankly, pretty lame.
While you may think the license is good value. If we have a TV in the UK and watch it we have to pay the license. The fee is for the BBC channels alone. I can't choose to watch commercial TV only and not pay the fee. Simple solution is to scramble the BBC. But they're too used to getting their grubby little paws on money by some kind of state extortion. I'll take a guess and say that I watch a max of about 2 hours of BBC TV a week if that. That's hardly fair.
I'd rather the choice to opt out of the BBC and still watch TV.
Perhaps it will be worth the fee if I have children (kids TV.) I love BBC radio 4 though. The radio should work out as far better value for money, but quite how they calculate it to be an 1/8th of the TV costs is a bit of a puzzle! They must be throwing money at presenters or something.
Well the main reason for startups not doing this is that broadcasting (at least of new content) is a land of exclusive deals over varying size territories. In order to offer content you would essentially have two options:
1) Bid national scale against the big players for enough content to fill your channel which wouldn't be within reach of anything I would normally picture as a start up.
OR
2) Make arrangements with each of the current local exclusive rights holders and have Geographic holes where you couldn't make the deals (which might mean different content is blacked out in each area).
The best chance might be if you could start in one large broadcast market where you could find an amenable local broadcast partner AND cable company. I wouldn't expect it to be easy or profitable though.
Could established players do it? Maybe although it might depend on the exact structure of their current deals.
I was under the impression US networks are anything but free? I mean, guys like Viacom pay our cable companies for potential access to our eyeballs here in Holland. I heard they actually get paid by cable companies in the US. For jersey shore .. with adds. Way too many adds.
Now, i dont know how much money ads bring to the table, but they could double my cable bill, (from 10 to 20 euros), if it would all be ad free.
> The stupid thing is that Americans are forced to watch the Olympics with 20 minutes of commercials per hour, while the rest of the world gets to watch it nearly commercial free.
We complain about commercials here on HN, but you would be surprised to learn there are many people that actually enjoy watching commercials. For example, when I was at my parents' house a few months back, I watched something on TV with my mom. I instinctively muted the TV when commercials came on, but she told me to actually turn them back on. I asked why, and she said enjoyed watching the ads.
I can't stand people that routinely mute ads because that in itself is an interruption. Even worse is a friend of mine that shouts violently for the ads to fuck off every time he mutes them.
The problem for me is that with muted ads, you have to visually monitor the TV to find out when to unmute. I find it much easier to just use my mental ad-filter, though I'll happily grant an exception if the station is doing the stupid loud-volume ad trick.
Commercials are not a problem at all with a DVR. You'd be surprised how good you get at skipping them. If you have kids you hand them the remote control and it happens "automatically".
I don't even mind the commercials, it's the awful commentators that ruin this for me. They should have done a simulcast on MSNBC without the idiotic comments.
CTV coverage in Canada titled him on-screen as the "Founder of the World Wide Web" then the commentator called him the Father of the Internet... so half marks, if possible.
Tennis fans regularly suffer this same nonsense from NBC every year with the French Open and Wimbledon[^1]. I can't see them changing anytime soon.
Relatedly, their whole cable TV package requirements for online streaming is also very annoying. It requires having a package with both CNBC and MSNBC to get access. I still actually have a cable TV package, but my provider does not offer MSNBC on any of their packages so I'm out of luck.
Thankfully, there's the Yankees/Red Sox this weekend so I'll watch that instead.
[^1]: Thankfully ESPN bought the rights to Wimbledon starting this year. Maybe they (or parent, Disney) could do the same with the Olympics once the rights are up for grabs again.
NBC is providing live streaming on the web and via iOS and Android apps of every event, for free to people who have a cable, satellite, or telco TV package that includes CNBC and MSNBC. They are also providing on-demand access so you don't have to watch live.
For many people, they won't even have to log in to access this, as they have worked with some providers to automatically recognize IP addresses as belong to people whose accounts qualify.
So they didn't include the opening ceremony. It seems pretty nit-picky to focus on that and ignore the massive effort they've done to provide the live coverage of everything else.
NBC is providing live streaming on the web and via iOS and Android apps of every event, for free to people who have a cable, satellite, or telco TV package that includes CNBC and MSNBC.
s/for free/only/
I tried to find an option for people who do not choose to have TV. I failed.
It's not being nit-picky - the opening ceremony is quite a massive bit of any Olympics. As one of the Athens 2004 organizers said, a 400m race in Sydney, Beijing, Greece or Atlanta would look exactly the same - it's the opening ceremony that sets the the theme.
And the BBC has done all of the above plus the opening ceremony. NBC's "massive" effort isn't for charity - people are paying money for it - they'd better deliver the goods.
In 2008 anyone with an internet connection could watch any event and replay any event. And that was without the obnoxious commentary that accompanies most TV broadcasts. I really enjoyed some of the longer events like the bike road races for their silent, almost Zen qualities. Won't happen this time.
Now, I have to use a UK proxy to see it, and it's got the usual idiots yammering over the action.
Oh yes, that was godly. It seriously should be the standard for any big sporting event. It's sad to see that NBC has regressed so badly from the standard set in 08.
Well, companies such as Google need to start buying broadcast rights and put it all on the 'net. I am sure they can make far more money online than NBC ever pulls out of their advertisers. For one thing, these days lots of people DVR shows not just for convenience but to skip the commercials. I sure do. I'd rather watch something 30 to 45 minutes after the fact than have to endure the obtrusive commercials.
NBC paid $1.1 billion just for the US broadcast RIGHTS, nevermind all of the other production costs. That would be a pretty big gamble for Google to take, to assume they could generate enough revenue through online advertising to make a profit.
If Google put the Olympics online with its own commercials (I assume that's how they would monetize it?), why would you stop watching your commercial-free DVR recording in favor of Google's broadcast?
Far more convenient.
Better quality.
I get to watch what I want vs. egocentric American coverage.
I get to watch it on my schedule.
I get to watch it on different devices.
I can even watch it on the road or while camping.
I'd probably even get to watch it in different languages (granted, not so applicable to the London event)
The ads might even be relevant.
And, in general, I prefer to support 'net-based entertainment vs. broadcast because, well, they suck.
> Believe it or not, the mainstream American audience wants to see egocentric American coverage - they enjoy it.
Probably true. I hate it.
Don't get me wrong, I love to see how our athletes are doing. I simply don't enjoy the cultural isolation and exclusionist coverage that our media pushes on us. Here's an opportunity to learn about others and we get fed a typical short-attention-span American egocentric media diet.
This becomes very evident once you travel around the world, look back at the US and make some comparisons.
When it comes to the Olympics, World Cup or other events it is also particularly bothersome because the US is made-up of hundreds of cultures that have come together to adopt this nation. This does not mean that Afgani-Americans or Chilean-Americans don't not want to see how the teams or athletes from their native soil are doing. Events like the Olympic Games are opportunities to honor the many cultures that form this nation by, at the very least, providing reasonable exposure to their athletes and stories as well.
This is where online coverage could be so far ahead of typical network stuff. You get to watch what you want.
Another thing that doesn't sit will with me is when accident reports go something like "139 people, three Americans". OK, I get it, you are trying to tell our country that three of ours got lost in the accident. However, for some reason, these reports always sound like they don't respect the rest of those lost in the accident. I surely can't be the only one who feels this way.
Finally, why are NFL or NBA teams "World Champions" when the competition is national?
It's important to know to what degree an attack entangles the United States, politically speaking. Everyone's life is beyond value, philosophically speaking, but U.S. political response depends on how many Americans were involved. Therefore, it makes sense to report that number to United States viewers.
I've effectively boycotted as I have no legal means of watching the events. Way to make another institution irrelevant to my generation, big media. Enjoy your profits while they last.
Having watched the first half live on the BBC in the UK it wasn't as embarrassing as I feared. The 3D version was pretty good, it worked better than many things.
The sense of entitlement in the last few Olympics related posts is really getting obnoxious. Granted the article here makes a good point about it being silly to live tweet an event that is not being broadcast. But, everyone commenting seems to think watching the Olympics for free is a god given right.
I am excited that, unlike the NFL, MLB, and other professional sporting events, the live-streaming capability provided to NBC subscribers is actually quite thorough and high quality.
Hungarian TV showed it straight through, no ads (and free) (and live) but still had the damn commentators talking through all the music. Why do they think that adds anything? It drove me bananas.
Well here's my attempt at doing something marginally useful. The only thing I could really think of. I generally am ambivalent about these media blunders because I don't watch TV... but I was really looking forward to the Opening Ceremonies.
The NBC "newscasters" were lying on air, saying things like "the big question now is who will be lighting the olympic torch," "the opening ceremony will begin in 2 hours" (when it was already over!), "in three hours time, the debate will be on as to whether the London or Beijing ceremony was nicer, we have the world has no idea what surprises are in store," and so on and so forth. They're deliberately misleading their viewers, and it's disgusting.