Bob Costas was on the Kalb Report last week and and at one point talked extensively about the positives and negatives the Internet has on sports (pgs. 18-19 of the transcript), saying that the Internet is a vast opportunity for people who are otherwise unrecognized as writers or sports analysts to find their voice, and could also serve as a venue for correcting “the shortcomings or the mistakes or the corruption of the mainstream media”. When asked about whether NBC provided enough Internet coverage for this year’s Olympics, Coustas said that NBC provided more Internet coverage for the 2008 Olymplics then for any other Olympics ever.
Was it enough? The Olympics web site provided only a handful of events live via the web. NBC aired their Olympic coverage almost exclusively on their television channel and their coverage and analysis was largely the only coverage available for most of the events. The Internet could obviously expand detailed coverage of all of the Olympic events quite easily, so why is NBC so keen on restricting this? Costas himself said on the Kalb Report that there was not enough attention paid to the cultural and historic context of the games by NBC, and obviously the Internet could fill that gap.
So, with all things considered, what does coverage of the Olympics need to look like in 2012 from a Web 2.0 standpoint?
4 Comments
October 20, 2008 at 11:48 pm
From a marketing standpoint, the Olympics should not be aired live on the Internet so that NBC could continue to make money through hundreds of millions of people watching their broadcast. However, all events should be available to watch after the event has occurred. This way, people who are interested in events would have all the time in the world to watch those events. Also, NBC should create a blog to each event put on their website so that fans and critics could discuss what they think. This would enhance interest in the olympics because people would feel more obligated to know what is going on and participate in discussions.
October 24, 2008 at 7:41 pm
NBC pays millions and millions of dollars to have exclusive rights to broadcast the olympics. they had nearly 24 hour coverage of the games, and covered the finals and semi finals of every event. In addition, extra footage was available on their website, and still is available on the website.
I dont think that NBC’s Olympic footage should ever be on youtube or any other site since NBC paid a ridiculous amount of money for exclusive rights, and should have permanent ownership of all footage.
NBC is very overprotective of their footage, but they should be. they are establishing ownership of their content and assigning credit, which is something that we talked about in class, but usually about the other end, when companies did not protect their content.
I think the coverage of the 2012 olympics will be the same or very similar, I think NBC did a great job and will run production in a similar way for the next olympics.
October 29, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I definitely agree that airing the olympics live online has positive and negative effects for producers. But I feel that there are more positive effects for NBC when you look at the situation. People generally would rather watch shows or events on a TV which is much bigger than a laptop and probably has better quality, etc. The main reason people would watch an event on a computer is if they’re traveling or don’t have access to a TV. Therefore, NBC wouldn’t be losing many viewers because they wouldn’t be able to watch the Olympics in the first place. If NBC allowed all the events to be viewed online they’d still be able to make money on advertisements from other major corporations.
November 10, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I have very mixed feelings about airing the olympics live online. Part of me thinks that it would be much nicer to be able to skip certain event and be able to watch the clips that I truly wanted. But another part of be thinks that what truly makes the olympics special is how rare the events are. I truly enjoy those summer nights every four years when I sit on my couch and watch hours of the olympic games. Airing them live online, would definitely take away how special the olympic games are, but would also make it easier to catch up if you missed an event. NBC is ultimately going to be the one to have to make a decision on this difficult topic and viewers will just have to deal with the outcome.