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Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

MountieBoyOz said:
I hope watching the gold medal game proves to Bettman that NHL hockey belongs in Sochi. Even though we lost, it was a great game.
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As somebody who has always hated the idea of pros in the Olympics, it was such a spike in the vein that it sold me. Now, I'd prefer a World Cup of Hockey, and giving the Olympics back its amateur ethic, but (1) the latter will never happen, since there is too much money invested in cross-marketing the NBA with the dick-waving crowd, and (2) there are already the World Championships, so the international field already has redundancy, and 3 different events would be too much clutter, unless they dropped the Worlds in Olympics years and had the World Cup in an off-year.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Old Pio said:
And thanking the various "indigenous chiefs" for allowing the Olympics to be held on "their" territory was another cringe inducing moment. What could they have done to stop the proceedings? Well, they got high profile props during both ceremonies, and that sure beats the heck out of selling blankets and soapstone sculptures outside the Hudson's Bay store.
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One half-hearted thank you for swiping a continent is a pretty sweet deal. :p
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Handyman said:
Seriously I stayed quiet on this, but the constant whining about NBC was on the level of "the Gophers always get the late game in the Final Five". Every event I wanted to watch I saw, all the events were listed to what channel they would go to (and they were all easy to find...if you cant find MSNBC or USA or CNBC on your channel guide give up you have already lost) and during a lot of the hockey games there WERE NO FRIGGIN COMMERCIALS! NBC lost hundreds of millions on this and still put on a ****ed good product and yet everyone and their mother had to friggin cry like Cindy Crosby because Parise forbid they didn't get to possibly watch China face West North Thailand in curling in HD!!!11!!

Look, there are about a billion ways to find out what happened in the Olympics...if you don't like, don't watch it. But if you are gonna watch it, take the stick out of your butt and try and enjoy yourself instead of sounding like a 3 year old that needs a time out! :p :D ;)
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Careful you don't bump your halo as you walk through a doorway. :p
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

unofan said:
I can understand protecting your investment, and timeshifting things to primetime. But the doublespeak of "no one watches things live during the day anyway" and "we're going to block access to other country's live streams so people must watch us" is astounding.

This isn't 1975 anymore. We have the internet. It's not an entitlement, but certainly an expectation that events will be available somewhere in some form. If NBC was only going to show 20 minutes of the downhill 6 hours after it happened (and 9 hours after it happened on the West Coast, even though it's the same time zone as the events), then they should've made the rest of the event available online for those who wanted to watch more than 20 minutes of it. The only extra expense would've been the bandwidth, the cameras were already there and already recording for the worldwide feeds. And by NBC's own words "no one" would've watched it anyway, so the bandwidth cost would've been minimal.

And if they weren't going to do that (which they didn't), why block other country's feeds so that the U.S. consumer can't see it at all?
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Why? Because they paid a lot of money for those broadcast rights.

And no, the extra expense is not just bandwidth - it's also a) lost ratings for primetime, and thus lost ad revenue, and b) the fact that online ad revenue is a paltry sum compared to TV revenue.

As far as blocking feeds from other countries, that's just the rights deals. The IOC sells rights per country, and unless and until they decide to package them all together, that kind of blocking is going to be the case. You can't blame those broadcasters for wanting to protect their investment.

I think the reality is that we'll see an Olympic TV network soon and that will solve a lot of these issues. You'll still have NBC's packaged highlight reel. There were plenty of indications that the battle over an Olympic TV channel had a big impact on Chicago losing out on 2016 (not the fact that they lost, but that they lost early).
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

blockski said:
And no, the extra expense is not just bandwidth - it's also a) lost ratings for primetime, and thus lost ad revenue, and b) the fact that online ad revenue is a paltry sum compared to TV revenue.
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That's the point - they didn't even show the event in primetime! We saw what, 5 out of 60-some downhill runs (the 2 Americans, the 2 other medal winners, and one wipeout)? Broadcasting less than 10% of an event is not covering it.

So if I, as an American, wanted to watch any of the other 55 runs, I was SOL. They were never broadcast on any TV network live or tape-delayed, never shown on an internet stream by NBC, never archived for internet viewing by NBC, and any try to watch those from another network by an American was IP-blocked (something fairly easily worked around by simply using a canadian proxy server, but nevertheless annoying and freaking retarded).
 
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Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

unofan said:
That's the point - they didn't even show the event in primetime! We saw what, 5 out of 60-some downhill runs (the 2 Americans, the 2 other medal winners, and one wipeout)? Broadcasting less than 10% of an event is not covering it.

So if I, as an American, wanted to watch any of the other 55 runs, I was SOL. They were never broadcast on any TV network live or tape-delayed, never shown on an internet stream by NBC, never archived for internet viewing by NBC, and any try to watch those from another network by an American was IP-blocked (something fairly easily worked around by simply using a canadian proxy server, but nevertheless annoying and freaking retarded).
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I'm not trying to defend their decisions here, but put yourself in NBC's shoes.

As for blocking IPs, that's not on NBC. The IOC sells rights to each nation, and just because that doesn't fit in nicely with the way you use the internet, that doesn't mean they can just work around those contracts.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

blockski said:
I'm not trying to defend their decisions here, but put yourself in NBC's shoes.
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I'm not incompetant enough to visualize myself in NBC's shoes. But the easy solution without making any other changes would've been putting full event coverage up on the web 24 hours after the event. That way they could still protect their prime time viewers while allowing Americans a chance to watch the full event (albeit a day late).

As to the latter, it was definitely NBC, not the IOC, pressuring others that resulted in the IP block. I'm too lazy to dig up the stories with the quotes from a month ago, but the gist of it was that the Canadian and European media bosses all threw NBC under the bus on that one.
 
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Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

unofan said:
I'm not incompetant enough to visualize myself in NBC's shoes. But the easy solution without making any other changes would've been putting full event coverage up on the web 24 hours after the event. That way they could still protect prime time and provide full coverage to the American public.

As to the latter, it was definitely NBC, not the IOC, pressuring others that resulted in the IP block. I'm too lazy to dig up the stories with the quotes from a month ago, but the gist of it was that the Canadian and European media bosses all threw NBC under the bus on that one.
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It doesn't matter who requested it, it's a direct result of how the IOC parcels media rights (by country) and the fact that the internet doesn't really follow borders.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

There was nothing wrong with the NBC coverage that isn't wrong with all network sports coverage: there needs to be a way to mute the commentators and just listen to the ambient sounds of the event. Imagine how wonderful figure skating would be with NO commentary.

The idiots buzzing in your ear are the problem. The camera work is more amazing with each Games, the infantalizing commercialism is the price we pay for living in this benighted epoch... the one thing the networks could do for us, with no cost to themselves than deflating their peacock hosts' egos, is to give us a way to shut them up while still hearing the sounds from the event.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

blockski said:
It doesn't matter who requested it, it's a direct result of how the IOC parcels media rights (by country) and the fact that the internet doesn't really follow borders.
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I get that point, but when NBC is blocking things they themselves won't ever show, it defeats the purpose of the broadcasting contract to begin with (and yes, I realize NBC surely acted within the letter of the law(contract), even if they trampled the spirit of it at the same time).

Also, why should Americans settle for and be content with coverage inferior to others? Again, it's an expectations game: If Canadians and the Dutch get access to everything, certainly we could've as well, if NBC weren't a bunch of morons.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

unofan said:
That's the point - they didn't even show the event in primetime! We saw what, 5 out of 60-some downhill runs (the 2 Americans, the 2 other medal winners, and one wipeout)? Broadcasting less than 10% of an event is not covering it.

So if I, as an American, wanted to watch any of the other 55 runs, I was SOL. They were never broadcast on any TV network live or tape-delayed, never shown on an internet stream by NBC, never archived for internet viewing by NBC, and any try to watch those from another network by an American was IP-blocked (something fairly easily worked around by simply using a canadian proxy server, but nevertheless annoying and freaking retarded).
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That's what my major beef was, especially with the structured snowboard events of PGS and SBX... In both events, you have a structured "bracket" in which NBC knew in advance what they were showing.... They took the time to show qualifying runs for SBX in the afternoon on NBC... This is "boring" to Joe Six-Pack... Just a single racer going down the course at a time vs the clock... But then when eliminations start, they don't show any of the Round of 32 (8 heats) and only show 2 heets containing US riders in the Round of 16... Why not allow the Round of 32 on the internet since you know that you aren't gonna show it in primetime? It can also rope in more viewers for your primetime coverage...
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

RaceBoarder said:
That's what my major beef was, especially with the structured snowboard events of PGS and SBX... In both events, you have a structured "bracket" in which NBC knew in advance what they were showing.... They took the time to show qualifying runs for SBX in the afternoon on NBC... This is "boring" to Joe Six-Pack... Just a single racer going down the course at a time vs the clock... But then when eliminations start, they don't show any of the Round of 32 (8 heats) and only show 2 heets containing US riders in the Round of 16... Why not allow the Round of 32 on the internet since you know that you aren't gonna show it in primetime? It can also rope in more viewers for your primetime coverage...
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So, if they showed the first couple of rounds and then cut off their live internet coverage so they could save the events for prime time, you'd be happy with that?
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

blockski said:
So, if they showed the first couple of rounds and then cut off their live internet coverage so they could save the events for prime time, you'd be happy with that?
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Happier, anyway, since you'd at least get to see it.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

blockski said:
So, if they showed the first couple of rounds and then cut off their live internet coverage so they could save the events for prime time, you'd be happy with that?
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Happy, no... But at least I would understand their logic... It's better than not being able to see the event at all...
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Old Pio said:
The one thing I took away from my USCHO bretheren during this Olympics was the surprising interest in curling, which is not a sport and shouldn't be on the program, IMHO. Remember a couple of years ago, there was some discussion about including ballroom dancing on the summer program? Well, ballroom dancing is much closer to a "sport" than curling will ever be. What's next--checkers? chess? dominos? bridge? fly fishing? I didn't watch a minute of the "competition," but don't begrudge anyone who was caught up in the "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" of shuffleboard with great big rocks and kitchen cleaning devices.
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Amen. Its not that its a sport I just don't like (i.e. field hockey), its not even something thats on the fringe like figure skating, which may or may not qualify but at least requires some form of athletic ability. Its an excuse to get drunk, but so is Beirut/Beer Pong, and that hasn't made the games yet.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Which is why they call these things "Olympic Events" rather than sports.

And curling was probably of interest because it was about the only god**** thing that NBC aired live besides hockey, and since hockey was going head to head nightly vs. their tape delayed other events, it was pretty much hockey and curling alternating on my tv/computer.
 
Re: Part VI of the XXI Winter Olympiad: USA!! USA!! USA!!

Count me out of beer pong: I lose on purpose so I can drink more.
 
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