Which Network will get the Olympics?

And, alas, STILL delayed on the West Coast. Well, it'll make planning pages easier ... assuming there's still such a thing as a print product then.

 

There are some problems with some events being broadcast live... too much dead time that can't be edited out. Yes, you get a better feel of "being there", but you might also have to sit through 30 alpine skiers or the 25th place gymnastics competitor on the uneven bars unless you plan your features REALLY well.

I think that's been the biggest advantage to showing events on tape: you have more control and can edit out what you don't want.

But, if you look at the last 3 Olympics, the trend has been to show more live stuff when realistically feasible, such as live swimming in Beijing and figure skating in Vancouver, even when it meant awkward local start times. Now, I wouldn't expect them to show too much live from Sochi or Korea because of time differences, unless they are bumped to a cable outlet.

 

The Games mean a lot more to NBC than they would to FOX or ABC/ESPN. FOX has car racing, baseball and the NFL to keep it happy. ABC/ESPN has college football, basketball and the NBA.

Other properties notwithstanding, the Olympics are the biggest thing NBC has. And it's not just the Games themselves. It's Olympic trials, world championships in various Olympic sports and even the run of the mill Saturday gymnastics, swimming and track meets. Lose that and you have to rethink your entire sports program philosophy.

 

Surprised ABC/ESPN put in such a low bid more than anything after all their talk - unless they were bluffing the whole time (the more money NBC and/or Fox commits to the Olys would be less money they can spend on other sports programming).
And lets not forget that NBC now has about twice as many cable channels it can put Oly coverage on than pre-merger.

 

Yeah. How much is too much? Do you want to split an audience and compete with yourself, boxing on one channel, table tennis on another, weightlifting on another?

In the past, the MSNBC, CNBC and USA schedules have been somewhat staggered to provide round the clock coverage, but without a lot of overlap. Pretty good strategy, it seems. I suspect we will see more of the "minor" sports streamed online. For a fee, of course.

 

Why do I have the feeling my Comcast cable rate is about to skyrocket?

 

Can you say TripleCast?!?

 

I'm old enough to remember the Triple Cast. It was awesome!

 

Especially because, back in the old days of analog cable, the filters didn't really work very well, so we could watch all three networks even though we didn't pay for them (sure, snowy picture, but that was OK).

 

And NBC took such a beating on it that they gave it away for free the last few days of the Games.