You May Hate NBC's Olympics Coverage, But You're Watching It

Among the adjectives The SunBreak commenters have used to assess NBC's 2010 Olympics coverage: "unacceptable," "boring," "pathetic," "incompetent," "horrible," "terrible," "disgraceful,"  and "awful." People are mad that the coverage is tape-delayed. They are mad about the number of commercials. They are mad that the network shows too many U.S. athletes. Or not enough.

KING 5, presumably inundated with complaints, has posted an apology about the tape delay. 90 percent of Seattlepi.com readers call the tape delaying "ridiculous." (And not in the good way the Sasquatch lineup is.)

But--people are watching. In an age where practically all network TV programming is losing ratings, Winter Olympics ratings are up 15 percent over 2006. Those annoying tape delays? They aren't turning off viewers. Four of the five cities where NBC had the highest ratings Saturday night were outside the Eastern time zone. (Seattle ranked fifth, but had the highest share: 40 percent of Seattle TVs that were on Saturday night were tuned to the Olympics--thanks in part to CBC-less competition--even though they were watching something that was at least three hours old.)

The haters, I suspect, are the true Olympic diehards. The people who want to see all the competitors, who want to see everything live, who can't help themselves from checking online to see who's won. These people are ill-served by NBC's coverage. I wish that NBC had at least given such people an option--some sort of pay site or channel--where their need for coverage could be sated.

As it stands, such people are seeking out illegal streams, or pledging an NBC boycott.

And even for non-diehards--and I'd include myself in this group--it's frustrating to find out who's won before we can even see the event. What are we supposed to do? Just not check news sites all day? How will we see the latest CNN video of models falling off catwalks?

Seattle Times Olympics writer Ron Judd tried and failed yesterday to get NBC's VP of Communications to address these issues on the record. Wrote Judd: "Like most people in these 'communications' jobs these days, Christopher McCloskey wanted to speak only on 'background' about NBC's tape-delays."

What's there to say? NBC's stated goal--to show the events when most people are available to watch them--seems to be working for the non-diehard majority. And being that advertisers tend to be more interested in reaching the largest audience, it would be suicidal for NBC to show the Olympics any other way.

What you'd like to see is the Olympic Committee mandate that all their TV partners at least give people the option--perhaps for a fee--of watching events live. Until then, the people who care the most about the Olympics are the ones getting the bad draw.