NBC's fabulous full-screen streaming player, complete with a mandatory banner ad.

If you thought NBC choosing Jay Leno over Conan O’Brien was bad, evidently it was just a warmup for a whole lot of other terrible choices during the Vancouver games.

The Spectator wrote an editorial last week about the games so far where we called out NBC for tape-delaying events for most of America. This is a problem, but it’s also how its been done for years and years. Even the “Miracle on Ice” in the 1980 games was not seen live in the United States. For the most part, Americans are used to seeing delayed Olympic events.

The biggest problem with NBC’s winter game coverage is what they are choosing to show, where they are showing it, and how they are chopping up the events to be more “easily digestible” and “universally” appealing.

For example: You may have heard that the United States beat Canada in hockey Sunday in one of the most anticipated events in the entirety of these games. You probably didn’t watch it, however, even if you wanted to. Despite the game being the most viewed TV event ever in Canada, NBC gave the game the cold shoulder. It was relegated to cable network MSNBC and online, so you could either watch the game in standard definition or badly streamed with frequent dropouts. Trying myself to watch the historic game, I was forced to first prove to nbcolympics.com that I subscribed to a premium cable package (I don’t, I had to call my parents to get their Comcast account information) and then was presented with the lovely atrocity you see above as a full-screen player. It was even worse on my HDTV: that banner ad stays the same size no matter what resolution you’re viewing at, so a lower-res display like a TV will have almost 1/3 of the total screen space taken up by ads and blank space that it’s impossible to get rid of.

In the meantime, real NBC is showing a tape-delayed bobsled race from 5 hours ago. After that, they cut to in-depth coverage of ice dancing, a sport they says caters to their “largely female” Sunday night audience better than hockey. I don’t think that’s the real reason the game wasn’t on real NBC, and one of NPR’s bloggers seems to agree.

The basic problem with NBC’s coverage is that they haven’t improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it’s always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as “USA-Plus” (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly)

Hockey can’t be shown in this format. A hockey game lasts around three hours, and provides little time for cutaways to other sports or commercials, which is a staple for the network.

The way NBC is covering these games is a blow to actual sports fans. The real excitement and suspense of watching sporting events is ruined when the winner has been spoiled to you by print and web media hours before the event even shows on TV, and in this day and age those sorts of things are impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, perhaps one of the biggest stories of the games so far is pushed aside to cable and the internet while the coverage on the main network is people dancing around in frilly outfits. Sure, not a whole lot of people in the United States watch hockey, but not a lot of people watch figure skating outside of the Olympics either. Olympics viewers will watch events that are compelling and have athletes that they connect with, and a USA vs. Canada hockey game has all those.

I’m tired of having to avoid Twitter and Facebook and seattletimes.com so I can live in a bubble and have at least some amount of suspense. I’m tired of only seeing Americans doing their ski runs and having 3 minutes of commercials per 5 minutes of content. I’m tired of the hassle I have to go through to watch any kind of live events. NBC: it’s 2010. You’re being scooped by PRINT MEDIA. People consume media differently now, and you better get your shit together before ESPN comes in and shows you how to really cover sports.

Instead, CTV–a privately owned channel–won the rights to the games and will be doing the coverage in Canada. The only problem is that CTV isn’t on nearly as many people’s cable dials in Washington.

From the Times’ story:

A local spokesman for Comcast, the primary cable carrier in the area, said, “We don’t carry CTV anywhere in Washington and don’t have plans to carry it for the Olympics.” Apparently, CTV is also not available on satellite in this area.

Viewers will have to choose NBC for their Olympics watching,  which the article says will air events on a tape delay in primetime.

That’s right. The events are happening only 100 miles away, but we don’t get to watch them live. Even worse, we all know that NBC is excellent at showing us American-centric coverage infused with useless emotional stories about the athletes. People in Washington chose CBC for previous Olympic games because they showed live, relatively unfiltered coverage of athletes of all nations.

It seems some aren’t very happy about this. The comments on the Seattle Times story are full of people badmouthing the NBC coverage, probably people used to watching the CBC coverage who won’t be able to watch it this time.

A comment:

It’s one thing to show it tape delayed to the whole country (which is beyond annoying as is), but for us to get it three hours after the East Coast is extremely frustrating. This is sports, not a TV show. And it is insane that the events are taking place in our own freaking time zone and the East Coast gets to watch live while we get to hide from results (or not) and wait three hours.

It’ll be mostly online coverage for me.