On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:05 PM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 9:25 PM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I don't disagree with this, except that, by making so much coverage > > available on the cable (and broadcast) networks during the overnight and > day > > hours, I think NBC is approaching a reasonable compromise. Non-primetime > is > > treated significantly (not completely) like sports coverage, which helps > me > > tolerate the entertainment treatment they give to the primetime show. I > will > > also say that I notice they are doing their up close and personal pieces > > mostly in much smaller bites, which allows them to be squeezed into the > > (artificially elongated, thanks to their pre-recorded nature) natural > breaks > > in the actual competition. The longer pieces seem to be mostly introduced > > from the main anchor desk by the "correspondent" who worked on them, > which > > cues me to hit the ff button. > > I disagree that it's a compromise, because for what the big three > sports (gymnastics, track, and swimming/diving), there's no > compromise: you're watching it when NBC tells you you're going to > watch it, with all their crap shoved in the middle of it. A compromise > would be to air it live on nbcolympics.com for people who are > dedicated to watching it live. The people that NBC want to declare > their prime audience are not going to be logging on in the middle of > the day to watch this. They truly are the people who want their pablum > served up prechewed and ready for easy digestion. Here's what I'd say > to NBC: try it for one day. See if the ratings really do drop off a > cliff like you fear. If they do: congratulations for proving us all > doofuses. But I'd bet a significant amount of money that the sports > fans who want to watch it live will watch it live, and what I'll call > the "Olympic Core" audience will still tune in at 8:00 PM, and your > ratings will stay close enough to even that no one will mind. Hell, if > you're really that paranoid, charge people $5 to watch it early! Or > find some price point: I'm assuming there's still at least a couple > people in your market research department. > Well, I did say *approaching* a reasonable compromise. I did not look today, but over the weekend the gymnastics was available live online, as was the swimming. I have not had a problem navigating to it (I downloaded the widget for it to my igoogle page, and get to the sport I want by clicking the link on the daily schedule). But I have missed the commentators, so I have not been using it very much. I have found that if I leave the page with the online screen open for a few minutes, it freezes my whole computer for some reason. Another practical problem I have noticed when trying to organize an approach to viewing things live, is that in real time these things are spread out over many hours. You can not easily settle in for two or even three hours to watch the gymnastics coverage, as you have to wait for many hours for the different rotations to and clusters to go through. Or you have the opposite problem, where many of the events are happening at literally the same time, so you can't watch all the ones you want live (well, I have not tried having 3 windows open at the same time). Probably if there were premier events which lacked US competitors in medal contention, it would be better to watch them online to get good exposure to the preliminary rounds and a good feel for the main competition. But with the US fielding competitive teams in most swimming, gymnastics and track (if not field) events, I am finding it so far a lot easier, and time economical, to just let NBC organize it for me in the primetime. What I think would be ideal would be to use the Sports Network to anchor live coverage overnight and during the day, whipping you around to interesting live events at various venues, while providing background and context, maybe with a small team of analysts and announcers to talk over live video. This could be supplemented by short-term delayed coverage of conflicting events, or to fill time between major live events. Then do the primetime packaged show. Like you, I suspect that the primetime audience would not go down at all, and might increase, as it would generate more excitement and word of mouth. They are not there yet, but combining the online possibilities with the cable programing, they are moving in the right direction. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
