Post by OverAndUnder on Aug 22, 2008 19:24:12 GMT -5
Find someone to outbid NBC. Think about how annoyed the other countries are, they get to see all the American athletes too, but not their own because NBC won the bid for the entire feed.
This is simply incorrect. NBC has the media (broadcast, Internet, etc) rights for the USA only. The IOC divides the rights around the world. The countries that own the right control what they broadcast. All but the smallest broadcasters have their own hosts and announcers, too.
For example, the BBC held the rights for the United Kingdom.
In each country, the rights holders broadcast the events that they believe will be of greatest interest (or whatever criteria they choose).
At nearly $900 Million, NBC/GE's payment to the IOC for the USA rights to the 2008 Games is more than the rest of the world's combined rights fees.
Because they pay so much more than anyone else, they get to stipulate that some of the premier events are contested at times that are best for US live broadcast (swimming, gymnastics, beach VB).
For more info on which broadcasters own the rights around the world, click this link:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_Broadcasting
All this being said, ESPN is expected to provide strong rights competition for the 2014 and 2016 Games. They have publicly stated that they will broadcast more events live, no matter where the Games are held, citing their early-morning and late-night broadcasts of World Cup and Euro 2008 as recent examples.
ESPN's coverage of the 2006 World Cup was nearly flawless.
All matches broadcast live. All matches WEBCAST live. All matches replayed later in the day for people who can't sneak away from work. Live chatrooms with play by play for the matches.
If they could repeat that kind of performance for the Olympics, I'd gladly drown a sackful of kittens to get them the rights to the content.
Microsoft NBC's squandering of their multiple subsidiary channels is a travesty, but perhaps not surprising considering Microsoft's corporate cultural propensity to be late to the table in understanding populist adaptations of technology.
Somebody up there at MSNBC's headquarters needs to get in a time machine and go back a few years to read any of the hundreds of books and articles on the Web 2.0 mentality. In the age of 999 cable and satellite channels, it is nonsense to simply provide the same synchronous content feed to every channel - to make people wait to get their content in a pre-approved order. It's like making someone wait for a 4-track tape to wind its way to the next song when there's a perfectly good CD player that lets you go directly to the song you want at the touch of a button. Could you imagine if the NFL were treated this way? The country would divert funds from the Iraq War to hold congressional hearings.
Cable/Satellite providers have been doing sports tier packages for a while now -- if you are a fan you can easily see every NFL, MLB, MSL, NHL, NBA, EPL game. The fact that NBC chose not to take this approach with the 2008 Olympics and instead stick us with the old model of waiting for the editorial staff and producers up in the master control room to insert the next sterilized packaged content tape and press the play button is the result of either indolence or truculence. The marketplace has amply demonstrated that they prefer "real" content to fake crap, even if the production values aren't as high, and there is no greater drug for a sports fan - and therefore no greater draw for ratings numbers - than to witness the Real Thing, in its full Live! Raw! Uncut! glory.
MSNBC, wake up and smell the YouTube.