5. No. More. Tape. Delay. Anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfvPeOGNmUY
I thought about the last change I’d make to NBC being Ryan Seacrest related, but I have to be honest, I don’t have a problem with the radio jock and American Idol host knock-knocking his way into America’s homes every night during the Olympics. The Olympics have barely been about the actual sporting events in primetime on NBC, so why should any real sports fans care about what they do with their late night show? While Mary Carillo did a fine job in that role in Sochi, Seacrest is actually a smarter and far higher-profile choice for the role.
And yet, my last change does have to do with the Olympics. Even with next summer’s Games taking place in Brazil, NBC hasn’t committed to making everything live on American television. And they’re even starting to hedge on plans they’ve previously announced.
Per an Associated Press article from early August, NBC won’t have the luxury of taping as much in Rio and the powers that be aren’t thrilled about it.
“People still react to live,” NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus said Wednesday, a year before the start of the Rio Games. “While we’ve been very successful in delayed coverage because the Olympics are so unique, live is still better.”
It will be “less that polished presentation the time delay affords you,” said executive producer Jim Bell, “and more rock and roll sports event.”
Hearing something referred to as a “rock and roll sports event” is such television executive pabulum, it could only work for the Olympics, if even then. NBC had already announced that because of the time zone of the Summer Games, more marquee events will take place in the primetime window, giving NBC the choice of showing it live, or packaging second-tier events from earlier in the day just for packaging’s sake. Most events — swimming, volleyball, track and field — will be shown live. Others won’t. Again, from the AP:
But one of the Summer Games’ biggest sports will still get that polished presentation.
Gymnastics, which will take place in the late afternoon and early evening, will be shown on tape delay that night with a quick turnaround. Fans will be able to watch live on streaming video but not on TV.
“It’s frankly a better show packaged,” Lazarus said.
NBC hasn’t decided what to do with the sappy feature stories they air before and after taped events in primetime when they get to Rio next summer, with Bell saying the network may go in more of a “live profile” model, “as opposed to a treated 2 1/2, 3-minute lovingly crafted feature with music.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. My suspicion is that NBC will use the specter of live TV to its advantage, showing many events actually live, with others delayed by a just few minutes in an effort to control the narrative as best they can.
Will it really matter if NBC waits five minutes to show a swimming race? To most fans, it didn’t matter if they waited five hours.
Bell essentially admitted that, saying, “there is part of me that thinks we may tend to overestimate the value of it, but then there’s part of me as a fan, with regard to an actual sports event, that thinks there’s value in it.”
To even have the debate about a live sporting event’s value being shown to the audience live illustrates how little NBC sees the Olympics as an actual sporting event.
Imagine for a second if the final round of next year’s British Open is shown exclusively online or on a third-tier cable network — ahem Golf Channel ahem — with the event tape-delayed to show the final nine holes in prime time on NBC?
What if NBC did that with football games, and Sunday Night Football became a re-package of the top game from the 1 p.m. ET kickoffs, replayed for the biggest audience later in the day?
That’s what NBC has always done with the Olympics, and while they’ve been better at giving actual sports fans access to live competition on their Olympic-specific cable offerings, the biggest events are still held off TV and relegated to online-only streams that have proven quite unreliable through NBC’s otherwise robust digital video streams.
In the end the issue isn’t about tape delaying anything. Hell, NBC could pull out old tapes of Costas hosting the Seoul Games and millions of people who aren’t really sports fans but watch because they want to see Americans win things would tune in to watch. Show all you want on delay in primetime, but don’t ever hold back big events — like gymnastics — that could be seen on another television network live in an effort to maximize your evening ratings.
Put it on the just re-branded the Golf Channel. We need more events to show there anyway.
Monday: ESPN
Tuesday: Fox Sports
Wednesday: CBS Sports
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