2018 Winter Olympics
NBC Doesn’t Deserve the Olympics
Failed streams, lazy coverage, and inappropriate comments.
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NBC owns the exclusive broadcasting rights to the Olympics in the States. With any exclusive contract, there’s no incentive to innovate or care what product they put out. It’s evident with their coverage of this year’s Winter Olympics.
It began with coverage of the Opening Ceremony, an event that was taped nine hours before the primetime broadcast. This is normal and makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why NBC chose to broadcast the event as if it were occurring live, complete with thirty-minutes of pre-ceremony interviews and hype.
During this pre-show coverage, one of the commentators teased North and South Korea entering the stadium together. He explained the moment will be historic, but no one is sure why. Will it be historic because it’s the beginning of renewed peace talks between the two countries, or will it be historic because it’s a bright spot before tragedy strikes the Korean Peninsula? He said that. On tv before the Olympic Opening Ceremony. It’s disgraceful.
NBC’s comedy of errors continued in day two of their coverage. During primetime coverage presented a few choices. NBC covered figure skating (not my thing). NBCSN aired a replay of the first Olympic event, from Thursday, before showing men’s ski jumping — which they covered live that morning — complete with all of the wind delays. Why? Because they’re lazy. Twelve-hours apparently wasn’t enough time to edit the package into something presentable.
Thankfully, NBC offered live streaming on the NBC Sports App. There, I had a choice between multiple live events, including curing matches and the men’s snowboarding slope style final. I opted for snowboarding. It wouldn’t be that easy.
The NBC stream cut out every two-minutes for a commercial block that ranged from one Mama Mia commercial to a fun two-minute block of garbage. It didn’t matter if a guy was snowboarding or not, the commercials came like clockwork.
It’s 2018 and NBC’s failure to cover an international sporting event is completely unacceptable. In the age of full streaming, NBC’s offering is unrecognizable compared to their competitors. They can, and should, learn a few things from Netflix, Amazon, or even ESPN — who has their own glitches for major events — before the 2020 Tokyo Games.
If not, the IOC should revoke NBC’s exclusive contract and give it to someone competent enough to actually cover the games.
For more Winter Olympics commentary, check out Olympic Chinquapins.
