#NBCFail

I'm going to be bold: I think the 2012 Olympics are going to be remembered as the first real Olympics of the digital age- and it'll be to NBC's ultimate detriment. NBC has been getting a world of abuse dumped on its head for it's coverage of the Olympics and a lot of it is entirely well deserved:

The drivel-filled excuse of the commentary for the Opening Ceremonies aside, NBC cut to a Ryan Seacrest interview of Michael Phelps instead of showing a moving tribute to the victims of 7/7 because and I quote 'the tribute wasn't about America.' There's nothing you can say that can justify that decision. A day after London was awarded these games, a vicious terrorist attack killed 52 people in London and injured 700. You can't ignore that. Americans may have the attention span of drugged-up hamsters most of the time but the rest of the world doesn't and the way NBC cut the Opening Ceremonies was stupid- it butchered a spectacular display with inane comments and frankly needless interviews.

Then there's the inevitable tape delay. In years past and in games past, they could get away with it. Who's going to get up at 3 in the morning and watch a water polo final live from Beijing? London is a different bag of chips. Unless you completely unplug from the World Wide Web, you're going to see results well before NBC actually broadcasts them. Maybe that's just the nature of the beast- but at the same time, the model has got to shift sometime. Why can't we see events LIVE? Why do we have to have this carefully edited, crafted and moulded Prime Time programming that includes far too many pointless interview and nowhere near enough actual events. I get that NBC has bills to pay and some kind of a Prime Time replay is inevitable but it could be a lot less bloated and a lot more comprehensive than it is now.

Which brings me to the third point: NBCOlympics.com... OK, for Live Stream, fine- make people sign in with their cable provider and jump through hoops. But after the fact, NBC should Hulu that shit. Make it FREE and without hoops to jump through. Easy access to replays means that more people are going to watch them...

NBC needs to unbunch it's panties in a major way. An intrepid British reporter took the Twitter to fillet NBC for it's terrible coverage, publishing (a bit naughtily perhaps) the email of the head of NBC that way people knew where to direct their ire and after NBC Sports whined to Twitter about it, they locked him out. (Seriously now, #epicfail for Twitter for actually doing it and NBC now look like a bunch of whiners. If they don't want people to publish emails telling people exactly where to complain, they should do a better job.)

But you know what I'm finding? I'm finding that working second shift is actually something of advantage these Olympics- I get to see lots of fun, random events (handball, kayaking, weightlifting, field hockey, soccer and archery) LIVE during the day and can actually see replays of the stuff I already know the results of in Prime Time. It's working out fairly well actually...

In the end, I think complaints are inevitable. Americans are married to Prime Time like nobody's business and that's the model that the Networks are stuck too. Every other country shows events LIVE and in their entirety and doesn't give a damn. NBC has an opportunity to find a way to harness the power of the digital age to give more coverage to the Internet generation and really change the tired, weary old model of coverage that they've been stuck in for decades now. They want NBC Sports (as a longtime fan of ESPN's Sports Nation, I do think it's nice to see Michelle Beadle behind a desk again) to challenge ESPN? It's possible, but they have to think outside the box and take a risk or two...

And that goes for the Peacock Brand in general. This very night, I heard Brian Williams warn first time visitors to London that it's 'not like the London of Mary Poppins.' Seriously? Who the fuck is going to London expecting to see suffragettes, flying nannies and dancing chimney sweeps? NBC News followed it up with a scintillating report on how multi-cultural London is. As if this was a new discovery...

That's the most damning verdict of all: what kind of coverage do we expect from the 4th place network on American television?