NBC's Olympics: Separating half-baked from half-faked
Who would choose to be in NBC's PR Department this week?
I couldn't possibly accuse any of them of taking steroids, but could you blame them if they slipped something a little special into their noon smoothie just to deal with another sleepless night?
Many critics have been kvetching about technological fakery during the opening ceremony, when fireworked footprints were CGI'd for home consumption.
I'm not sure how the CGI increased our excitement.
However, the description from NBC's Matt Lauer was definitely breathtaking: "You're looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation."
Actually, it was animation, wasn't it? It was literally an artist's impression, except this one wasn't trying to sell you a timeshare.
NBC's Bob Costas, who is very clever, must have spent many moments composing his CGI voiceover: "We said earlier that aspects of this opening ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic."
Would you have preferred: "Here's some animation to give you a more vivid sense of what they're seeing out there"? I think I might have.
All this reminded me of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the wondrous opening ceremony had, as one of its moments of high drama, an archer shooting a flaming arrow to light the Olympic flame.
Please don't tell anyone else, but he missed. The Spaniards had allowed for this possibility by rigging the flame's dish with so much gas that the arrow had to only pass somewhere near it for the flame to light up.
NBC has also suffered some slings and arrows by keeping the word "live" on the screen even on the feeds to the West Coast. Twice an hour, they remind you briefly that the pictures you're watching are, well, not literally live. In fact, they're not live at all.
Their defense is that this is no different from American Idol, which Westies also see on tape delay, with the occasional reminder that this is the case.
Please forgive me, but American Idol is to live Olympics what America's Top Model is to live NASCAR.
The reason why so much of sport still gets more than tolerable ratings is precisely because it is live. You get involved in it because it is happening right now. And love 'em or love 'em less, the folks at Fox try to make live baseball as live as it could possibly be, even identifying fans, managers and reluctant spouses engaged in the most spontaneous behaviors.
If you followed NBC's impeccable commercial logic, then surely Costas' favorite event, the World Series, should be on tape delay on the West Coast. Same goes for the Superbowl.
And if you think there's some jolly jingoism going on here, well, if I remember correctly, ABC and ESPN televised America's most popular international event, the World Cup, live. As in, you know, the thing you're seeing on screen is happening right now in some other country.
I know of no other country that would delay a sporting event that is happening live in the hope of expected commercial gain.
To me this is as odd as the fact that love seats are always so incredibly uncomfortable.
Still, NBCOlympics.com continues to be a source of utter Future World uplift. And that is why I must go. Argentina's finest field hockeyists are playing Great Britain online.
When I say online, I mean it's almost as if they were literally right there on my laptop. You know, cinematically speaking.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Of course we've had some surprises occasionally especially one year where we fiddled with the start of daylight savings yet again and Adelaide led the rest of Australia for a week and a couple of news programs actually went live to Adelaide and a half hour delayed to the eastern states. But I doubt they'd find the money to do that now.
I don't like watching stuff on tape delay...you know you can just look it up later.
Watch the games an enjoy. Turn off your damn blogs for an hour.
And because NBC convinced the IOC and China to put so many events, including FINALS, in the morning just so they could be live in the USA in prime time.
Little did anyone know that that meant "live in the Eastern Timezone, delayed everywhere else." Do you think they would have agreed to that travesty if they knew the Mountain and Pacific time zones would be delayed anyway? Heck no.
And Is NBC afraid that if they start Olympic coverage at 5PM on the West Coast instead of 8PM, and only go until 10PM, they'll lose viewers? Better tell that to CBS sports when they fail to tape delay the Final 4. Or heck, NBC should know better, as they show the live feed from Wimbledon, Nascar, Football and a lot of other sporting events, even though that means not being in "prime time" in the West.
NBC should be stripped of their exclusive rights unless they agree to have one "unified time" broadcast nationally, or treat the East and West as TWO markets from now on, with two live shows, two hosts, etc. Nobody can tell me that it wouldn't work. With 100+ million people in each market, each is bigger than most countries on earth. The fluff pieces and all that can be shared, the event feeds shared (just broadcast live), just the order of events and hosts can be split. That means that in the West, you only tape delay what can't be shown live. If the coverage starts at 7PM, that means swimming and gymnastics finals go live, beach volleyball early rounds are delayed. Much preferred to tape delaying everything so beach volleyball can go first. Early, round robin play. Which OBVIOUSLY doesn't need to be shown live? ;)
- by henrodon August 12, 2008 9:35 PM PDT
- They're still at the "live" thing -- for the past hour or so, the women's gymnastics final has been playing itself out. Meanwhile, NBC is showing beach volleyball -- LIVE!!!
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- by robstak August 13, 2008 11:39 AM PDT
- why cant they be from the military? they said "many" are commoners. i agree that the footsteps thing really bummed me out, but the girl lipsynching? cmon that really is the norm rather than the exception by now. and the 12yo girl thing is horse poopie; the IOC needs to grow a pair and start regulating this BS before ppl get hurt.
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(9 Comments)By the way, on the subject of trickery, but of a different sort, NBC commentators have enthused over the wonderful precision of the massed drummers, dancers, Chinese Character performers, etc. at the opening ceremony. My wife, who is Japanese, tells me that the Japanese media have been talking about a report that 9,000 of the performers in the opening ceremony were military personnel who, presumably, have an extensive background in "maneuvers." another great example of things being not quite what they seem, and NBC going along with the gag.