The Olympics are my favorite thing. I LOVE the Olympics. I’ve been obsessed ever since Athens. I was in between jobs (I had just left one job and had about a month of vacation time saved up, so I didn’t start my new job until I took a few weeks off). I also didn’t have any children yet. I watched every single minute of those games. I’m regularly not a sports fan. My husband and I don’t even watch the Superbowl unless we are invited to a friends house for a party. Summer and Winter I try to watch every event that I can. This year was a bit harder because I had a full time job, and I have 2 kids. It was also harder because NBC did such a horrible job covering them. So here are the steps that were taken that have ruined my favorite thing… the Olympics.
Step One – Don’t show anything live, EVER. We live in a world of instant news. I mean INSTANT. With social media, results are displayed immediately following the event. Gone are the days when I could just avoid the nightly news to not be spoiled for the evenings broadcast. I am well aware that the “marquee” events occur at a different time then our prime time. I think though, that in THIS world, it becomes completely irrelevant. Why not air them LIVE and if I am unable to watch at that time, I will DVR it and watch it later. It will get watched though. This gives me the control to watch what I want, when I want to. Yes, I know that I could have watched events live on the web. That would make me hook up my laptop to my 60 inch TV in my house. I would rather it be just in full HD on my TV. So my suggestion to have the “best of both worlds” is to have one of your plethora of networks air everything live (it may take a couple of the networks for everything). Then do your little prime time “show” on the main NBC network for the less than hardcore fans. They can watch the marquee events when they get home from work, and feel good about it. For people like me though, who is highly involved in social media, give me the choice to watch ALL the events live on your networks.
Step Two – Show about 5 minutes of sports for every 15 minutes of filler. My other gripe about these Olympic games is that there was SO MUCH FILLER on the main network. There are so many sports going on that you are covering it on 4-5 different channels. I KNOW that you could air more sports on the main channel. Instead I get an hour and a half on World War 2 history when I could be watching archery. Or maybe I’d like to see more of the other countries perform on the balance beam instead of showing the same clip of the 5 American Gymnasts posing in front of the camera.
Step Three – Conduct the worst possible interviews. It started almost at the very beginning when Jordan Wieber just barely lost out on going to the Women’s All-Around Final. She needed some time away, just let her be until she is ready to talk. You not only took the great moment away Ali, but you showed so much disrespect for a GIRL who just had her dreams crushed. Asking people who just lost “what went wrong?” or “how do you feel now that your olympic dreams have been crushed?” just shows so much lack of respect for the tremendous athletes that they are. Let’s celebrate that the men got the silver medal in the swimming relay instead of making them feel they’ve failed. Some countries are just excited to COMPETE at the olympics. They are thrilled to just BE at the Olympics. Let’s not forget what an accomplishment it is to just be there competing with the best athletes in the world.
Step Four – Make apps that are complete failures. As someone who is obsessed with the olympics, I downloaded the official London 2012 Results app. Once the games started I realized with the NBC delay I would be spoiled for the actual airing. So I proceeded to download the NBC Olympics app thinking that surely the app wouldn’t spoil me for anything that hasn’t actually aired yet…. and then my phone started giving me NOTIFICATIONS about medals that hadn’t aired yet! What to the WHAT?
So let’s hope that after all the crap they have gotten for the failure of their coverage of the London Games they will pull something amazing together for Sochi and Rio. Cause if I have a full time job still during Rio… I may just have to take a couple weeks off. 😉
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