NBC President Jeff Zucker has been explaining to the U.S. public just how right the network was to not screen the Olympic opening ceremony live.
"There's no question we did the right thing in holding the opening ceremony to air in prime time on NBC that night," he said on CNBC's Squawk Box. "The excitement that built out of word of mouth that the opening ceremony was the most spectacular thing that people had seen, that China had wanted to make a statement and they made a statement and people wanted to see that."
I have many friends who would like to be media moguls, so I pored over these words in the hope of learning something that will help their careers.
Mr. Zucker seems to believe that word of mouth comes from deprivation, from tantalizing people that something amazing has happened and that they will only be able to see it on NBC television.
I think I can understand that.
(Credit:
CC Zoutedrop)
So one assumes, given that this strategy has been so successful, the next time NBC's cameras exclusively witness, say, an assassination or a politician saying or doing something nutty, they will keep it to themselves until prime time comes along. You know, just to build up the excitement.
However, I am still a little bit confused as to how he can be sure that if NBC had run the ceremony in real time, people would have told their friends that it was a dull, lifeless experience, not unlike the U.S. version of Coupling?
Might it not have been vaguely possible that those who saw it live would have offered positive word of mouth? You know, just as people do when they see a movie they enjoy. And might it not have been possible that these people would have tuned in again in prime time, given what a spectacular show it turned out to be? You know, just as people sometimes watch excellent movies twice, or enjoy reruns of Frasier.
Still, another thing I learned was that "the pipes," as Mr. Zucker refers to network television, are still the most powerful medium for mass viewing: "I think what's been great, we've been able to bottle that excitement since the opening ceremony and I think the team has captured that in every day since," he said.
I learned a lot from Mr. Zucker's use of the words "bottle" and "capture." Here's an example of how capture worked the other night to bottle ratings.
At the time, America's mouths were full of anticipatory words about the all-around women's gymnastics final.
Two Americans, Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin, were poised to show the Chinese that you could survive both puberty and grueling training and still be a wonderful gymnast.
So what time did Americans witness the final result? Why, a few seconds before one in the morning. Which didn't seem quite perfect to me.
I mean, if this mythical prime time was really the key to all the scheduling decisions, surely one might have expected that NBC would have enjoyed more viewers at, say, a few minutes before 10 in the evening? You see, that would have been the time on the West Coast when the result was finally decided.
But, no, the West Coast had its excitement bottled until after bedtime as it endured its usual tape delay and thousands and thousands of adults and children disappeared, never to be inspired by some of America's most wonderful women athletes.
That bottle seems to be a little corked to me.
Here's a thought. Just a small one. Is it possible that this TV attitude is affecting the NBC's online audience?
For all Mr. Zucker's public delight at the network's Olympian Olympic performance, I understand that some advertisers have not been entirely happy with the returns they are getting from the splendid NBCOlympics.com.
Indeed, word of mouth in the business is that several of NBC's advertisers have, over the last week, been discreetly attempting to augment their online presence by seeking to buy space on sites other than NBC's.
Does this mean that NBC's online Olympics site is somehow underdelivering on promises made?
While Mr. Zucker trumpets NBC's all-around performance, claiming some 30 million unique visitors to NBCOlympics.com, some interesting numbers have emerged from ComScore. They suggest that Yahoo's Olympic section actually had 8 million unique users in the U.S. in the week ending August 10. This compares to NBC Olympics.com's 6.7 million.
Brands are funny things. And NBC's is a very strong brand, one that has brought us brilliant programming such as The Office and 30 Rock, the latter a brave and funny series that superbly satirizes TV production.
But I wonder whether real people, real American people, not amused by NBC's bottling, capturing mentality, have expressed a small rebellion against the NBC brand and avoided the online offering in sufficient numbers to make the private projections fall short. As the ComScore numbers show, some people seem to have gone for their online Olympic fix elsewhere, despite the availability of good-quality video on NBC's site.
This is a pity because the NBCOlympics.com is a very fine place to spend time. While you're waiting for, you know, the live events to be shown.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
I am sure that you were fearing censorship at these Beijing Olympics.
No, not censorship by the Chinese.
Censorship by those folks at NBC who would prefer you to watch what they want you to watch and, most specifically, when they want you to watch it.
Well, here I am live on a Friday night, freely watching NBCOlympics.com, and witnessing the quite glorious sight of a Chinese cyclist trying to mend his bike.
It looks to me as if his back wheel has suffered a case of the bends.
Looking beneath the screen, I see that his name is Zhang and he is in 135th place. Who knew there would be that many riders in this, um, race over some sort of distance along misty roads that resemble London at six o'clock in the morning (except that there are no drunks visible)?
Here's what is strange about NBC's online coverage: I have no idea what I am watching. Yes, I have clicked on the commentary, which takes the form of a live blog stream--except that the writer is endearingly honest about his predicament.
This is how he has just spoken to me in writing: "The first time up the major climb of the finish circuit has substantially damaged the peloton, but we are still waiting on names and time gaps."
So this commentator is telling me he has no idea who is winning, no idea who is second, no idea who is third, and no idea of the time differences between the riders.
The Beijing Olympic mascots. One from the right, The Tibetan antelope. Really.
(Credit: CC Tama Leaver)If this commentary had appeared on NBC TV, the commentator in question would have been removed from his post quicker than persons of color and Mongolians have been asked to be removed from the bars of Beijing by the authorities. This commentator would have been sent to televisual Siberia.
There is a wonderfully eerie quality to the live online footage of this Olympic Some Sort of Cycle Race Along Roads.
The picture quality is quite spectacular. The mist is so real it could not possibly have been photoshopped in there by the Chinese authorities to provide some extra menacing ambience. This makes YouTube seem like student video. (Which I know some would contend it is.)
Meanwhile, the NBC livestream commentary is now telling me this: "Apologies for the data stream in the play-by-play window. We are trying to remedy the situation."
They cannot get a handle on the data. They are out of control. We have a situation here, people.
The riders, however, ride on. To the muted shouts of spectators who bang thunder sticks against the roadside barriers, as if they were praying for Kobe Bryant to miss another free throw.
Ah, NBC has heard my pleas and an overlay has appeared to tell me that we are watching a men's road race. The overlay, however, only stays on for a few seconds. Then it disappears again. So now I must rely on the official NBC Olympic online commentary. Here is the latest:
"The leading pursuit has shed some riders as they press towards the finish line 4'11" down on Patricio Almonacid."
No, I don't think they are four feet, eleven inches down. I think those are minutes and seconds. But all I can hear is the silence of a few rubber tires passing through a tunnel.
No voice is there to lead me through my bewilderment. No words of wisdom help to create excitement. Just the vague whistle of a spoke in the wildnerness. This is the live NBC Olympics.com experience.
Wait, wait.
The scrolling commentary has political news: "Iran, USA detente at the head of the main peloton as Iran's climber Hussein Askari takes a flyer and is joined by (we think) USA's Jason McCartney."
We think? We think? This might be a U.S. assault on Iran. And all they can say is "We think"?
I continue to ponder these words, watch the struggling bottom of the Iranian cyclist, and listen to the echoing nothingness that accompanies these besottingly shiver-making live images. It is as if NBC has hired John Carpenter to direct their online Olympic coverage.
And I can barely wait to see what he will do with the Romania versus Kazakhstan women's handball game.
I am tired, however. This has been live, uncensored (by NBCTV) online footage from the Olympics. I am comforted to know that I will slide beneath my comforter still a free man.
Free from the tyranny of NBC TV and happy in the otherworldly bosom of NBCOlympics.com.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
The more you tell people they can't do something, the more they'll try to do it.
It's the same with drugs. It's the same with turning your cell phone off at the movies. And it's the same with censorship.
There are many journalists lifting their laptop lids in horror at discovering that the Chinese government is now dancing the censorship two-step.
After all, the journalists wail, the Chinese, when they were bidding for the games, promised open Internet access. They promised it would be 80 degrees and sunny every day, too.
However the Internet, just like the commenters on this very site, has a robust constitution.
So perhaps it's worth considering how this supposed censorship will actually work.
According to those who are already busy carving their protests in digital stone, any sites with the dreaded word "Tibet" in their URL will be blocked. Same goes for the subversive propagandists at Amnesty International.
Yet what is to stop Jonathan Jockstrap, intrepid journalist employed by the Western Significant Times, from e-mailing his close friend in, say, some sickeningly uncensored Western country?
Jockstrap asks the friend to access one of the banned sites, copy and paste any relevant information to his e-mail, and send it right along with his best wishes.
Jockstrap will then have circumvented the ban and be able to report on anything he chooses.
Will the Chinese be upset? Well, only after they have read the malevolent (to them) Jockstrap column.
That's because they will surely not be willing to censor every personal e-mail (and phone call, for that matter). Could they possibly have employed enough censors? Would they possibly risk the ridicule this might bring? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But they surely cannot entirely stop communication between journalists and their editors and friends outside of China.
It's so easy to blame the Chinese (although I have to say they did themselves no favors by having their own neurotic Secret Service people running alongside the Olympic Torch and barging into conscientiously acquiescent objectors in San Francisco, for example).
But it will be relatively simple for the Western journalists to see if their own personal e-mails and other communications are being tampered with. (Phone call between journalist and editor: "You sent me a naked picture of your new boyfriend? What naked picture?")
And it will be relatively simple for the Western press to publish anything that the supposedly banned sites are saying about the games, the Chinese government, the dubious powers of Chinese medicine, or the real age of some of the Chinese competitors.
The real question is whether they will want to. The real question is whether there will be a lot of athletic spiking going on in newsrooms around the world.
The likelihood is that if we don't read anything that even borders on the controversial from the world's free press, it might not be the Chinese who will be the censors.
It might equally be the politically sensitive, revenue-reverential folks back home.
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