NBC failed coverage of the Olympics

The Summer 2012 Olympics took place in London from July 27 to August 12. NBC was the only channel broadcasting the games in the U.S. 

Theses games were unique in the sense that they were considered as the first social media games of all time. The use of Internet and social platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, has never been as important. That use made the games even more live and present than they ever were before.

NBC’s coverage of the game was largely criticized over the summer and as Lisa De Moraes from The Washington Post said, “one of the more popular sports of the Summer Olympics — according to the media, anyway — has been The Trashing of NBC.”

 

As there’s a five-hour difference between London and the U.S. east coast, NBC chose not to air the games live but to tape-delayed them. Not such a bad idea on paper, people were this way able to watch the Olympics on prime time and not during the day. And NBC was able to get even more viewers. The network only allowed its subscribers to watch the games live through their application or online.   

  

So where did the critics come from?
First, this tape-delayed airing was the first time NBC did that. They’ve been broadcasting it live for years without any problems. Critics rose against this delayed because viewers weren’t able to see the competitions at the same time they were occurring in London.

The second, and most important, issue with this coverage was the fact that NBC, although they were airing it within a few hours delay, keeps spoiling its viewers before the actual airing of the competition. Through promos, others show or worst, their own tweets, NBC kept airing images or videos showing athletes with their medals. Obviously, there were no points for viewers to watch the games anymore when they already knew the outcome.

The funny thing about these critics is how much coverage they got from traditional media, but the main place where “trashing NBC” reached its peak was on social media and especially on Twitter. The hashtag #NBCFail started appearing from the Opening Ceremony night.

Darren Rovell, a former NBC business reporter, summarized on Twitter the situation: "Context: NBC's ideal viewer is someone who doesn't get sports text alerts, doesn't appointment stream or get on Twitter."

It seems like NBC was caught up by the use of social media and the open critic place it allows. The network signed up for covering the future 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Olympics. It is going to be interesting to observe their future coverage after this one was so criticized. Especially when social media will probably be even bigger at that time. Let’s wait for a real effort, to do good this time, from NBC.