2012 Summer Olympics - Page 10

This is the case in Germany I believe - where ARD and ZDF have alternate days of coverage. The BBC and ITV (the two major UK broadcasters) both had rights in the 80s - though didn't co-ordinate their coverage and ITV always suffered poor ratings in comparison to the BBC (Which continues to be the case when they both show major events like football tournaments)

Nice fantasy, but it isn't going to happen in the U.S, not for a long time at least. The U.S. rights fees are a huge source of income for the IOC, no way are they going to want to lower them. Second, the Olympics are a prestige "trophy" event for NBC that can still deliver big ratings. In this age of fractured viewing audiences and lower ratings across-the-board, a trophy event is very valuable. There's no way that NBC or another network is going to share them with a rival. This isn't like other countries, exclusivity is what matters here.

I noticed Eurosport for these Olympics continues to have pan-European rights alongside the EBU members. Is the reason for this bourne out of earlier deals like what you described, where one public broadcaster and one commercial broadcaster in a country had the rights to air the Olympics?

Here's a list, by the way, of Olympic broadcasters this year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2012_Summer_Olympics_broadcasters

Breaking news....
The IOC has just (today) awarded the Canadian media rights for the 2014 and 2016 games to the CBC and it's french-canadian counterpart Radio-Canada. Private broadcasters CTV/Rogers had the 2010/2012 Olympics (must be hard on the CTV folks who are working now in London). CTV and CBC submitted two joint-bids to the IOC in the past year that were rejected outright. So the CBC went alone on the third bid and won it. Go figure.

You don't lose a timeout in the NFL if your challenge is sucessful. NBC's announcers explained the protest fee as well.

So do the other networks: ESPN, BBC, etal pay 1 Billion for TV rights? If not, we here in the US are paying for an inferior product. I agree with one of the other comments above as well that NBC views this as more of an entertainmnt than a competition. After all when they give all those up personal storylines it's almost like free advertising for those athletes sponsors.

Yes, I agree. They did explain that it's a protest fee, but isn't that kind of stupid in and of itself? Why does all that have to happen in the forefront and not in the background. Granted it only held up the medals presentation (I think) in this case, but IMO it just causes unnecessary distractions for the atheletes.

AIUI - no.

It was a bit of a surprise that the BBC were re-awarded the rights exclusively in the UK - lots of media commentators expected a joint deal with Sky (the dominant satellite pay-TV provider in the UK who also run a lot of their own channels) - as has been the case with F1 rights in the UK (BBC have 50% live rights with Sky 100%), and as has been the case in Italy with Sky Italia getting all the rights and RAI (BBC-equivalent) getting 200 hours.

Suggestions are that the BBC didn't have to break the bank (they've had a 20% budget cut in real terms due to a freeze in the licence fee and an increase in the services they have to fund) - but have been rewarded for such huge commitment across many years (The IOC think the BBC do the job particularly well apparently - classy live coverage with high production values and lots of innovation) And there is a legal issue with the rights going entirely to a Pay-TV provider - and commercial broadcasters would probably struggle to match the production values AND make money.

I guess the reality is that the US market is very different... NBC have a huge presence at each Olympics - they have three times the staff that the BBC have in London (yet appear to be producing a product some feel to be inferior) - and provide a huge bankroll for the IOC... The fact that they chose to cover in a way that many disagree with is up to them - the IOC are unlikely to chose quality over finance when the numbers are that big.

Apparently VPN providers offering UK IP addresses have noticed a significant increase in US subscribers of late...
Edited by sneals2000 - 8/1/12 at 12:29pm

Eurosport used to have very close ties to the EBU - in fact they may still do - and have pan-European Olympics rights. I suspect these may finish with these games? Effectively Eurosport started as an EBU channel. (The BBC, an EBU stalwart, provided quite a lot of 'backroom' support for a number of years I believe - though you'd have never known on-air)

NBC has top notch and the most current technological gizmo to cover every Olympics. Those gadgets are there to make money for their shareholders, and to produce a female centric prime time show for the OTA network first and foremost, and all the other stuff that don't belong get shafted to their family of sub networks. Looking closely at these prime time telecasts, you can't argue that every trick in the book was used in editing and massaging the product to make them like eye–candy. In fact, as aired they already look like highlight videos that will be sold at DVD stores just in time for thanksgiving. But the younger finger happy twitter sensitive groups didn't like this approach, they want the instantaneous unedited raw version. NBC's challenge is to make their product adaptable and monetizable for the new media. If they can find somebody who knows how to do this without losing millions of dollars, that might be the next Mark Zuckerburg. Stop thinking about your prime time Olympic TV shows, NBC!

Yes I saw one of those VPN things too, good for one week apparently. But no thanks, I already got CTV (and CBC for the next 2 Olympics)
Edited by JCL - 8/1/12 at 2:20pm

Exactly.. splitting up the Olympics across multiple rights holders will never equal the sum of the whole. If NBC and, say, CBS each were to have a piece, the 2 halves wouldn't be as valuable as the whole to 1 network. So it's going to be all or nothing, especially from a network like NBC that can claim a halo effect for its other programming. Similar to how the networks claim the NFL as a loss leader because of what it does for the network's bottom line.

http://deadspin.com/5930817/the-us-already-had-gold-locked-up-after-this-floor-disaster-from-russias-world-champion-so-nbc-didnt-show-it-to-you

NBC leaving out bits to make the bits they show appear more dramatic than perhaps they really were ... Does the Olympics really need broadcasters to fabricate jeopardy?

A little misleading - all I knew was what I saw on the prime time broadcast (don't really have access to anything but NBC) and it was clear by the American's floor exercise that it was locked. They didn't exactly play it up, but the info was there.

What nobody is saying here is NBC isn't doing anything Fox wouldn't be doing, and Fox would probably be much worse.

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Edited by DrCee - 8/2/12 at 4:39pm

It was enjoyable watching the CTV version of the Women's Gymnastics Team event, even if it was delayed by quite a bit. It was the whole event. Yes, all of the teams couldn't be covered, as it was live. But CTV, IMHO, did a damn good job of choosing the cameras for the various countries. Of course they did a lot of coverage of the Canadians, who managed to actually make the finals in ages. They did excellent coverage of the U.S. as well, especially with the starting event for the U.S., the vault.

AIUI, the NBC prime time coverage of Women's Team Gymnastics sucked. with U.S. viewers missing so much of what happened.

I wonder how many U.S. viewers that live within range of a Canadian station are watching CTV instead of NBC.

An interesting side note is that the Canadian swimming commentators were not paying attention when there was a technical error and a U.S. woman swimmer dove into the water when the "gun" went off and no one else did. She correctly reacted when the "gun" sounded, but wasn't paying attention in that the other leader sequences weren't done. The commentators were guessing all kinds of things but easily missed what I noticed in that it was a technical error. All of the sounds are electronically generated by a press of a judge remote control button. A couple of the sequences got skipped, resulting in the gun going off early.

They even showed a technician replacing the box and the remote control. Still, the commentators didn't get it completely right.

Yep, the Brits have the best coverage ever. NBC could learn a lot from the BBC. Ya, I know, apples and oranges.

Was able to see the whole six hour presentation from BBC one, starting with their 2 hr preshow.

Strange thing is that they rolled a video that mentioned the various ways that one could see the Olympics via the BBC, but for some reason failed to mention the 24 SD/HD channels available via satellite (free).

I think NBC lost a lot of time last night showing us semi-final swimming, I was A-OK with the finals but the semis? meh.. They didn't even show Orozco's last exercise on the bars and he's Team USA..

Well at least they showed some of the Gymastics medal hopefuls failing badly on some events.

Except you can't know for certain since that opportunity will never arise. The only thing you can be certain of is, that right now NBC is looking like an idiot on the world stage and the coverage is a debacle of poor construction, bad editing and missing the spirit of the occasion.

The big mystery about this is that they showed the big compelling gymnastics story after 11 PM EDT/PDT. That is still after prime ratings time, right? They were showing it at the same time on the East and West coasts? It doesn't seem to make much sense to me. I guess that Beach Volleyball and swimming qualifiers really was expected to get loads of viewers yesterday.

Glad you're enjoying it. They're doing their coverage with 1/3 the staff that NBC deploys (and I believe that includes the staff host broadcasting the rowing, tennis and football) - NBC doesn't host broadcast anything... The BBC team are working VERY hard. I had lunch with one of them today (well grabbed a 20 minute sandwich!)

Simply deploying commentators (and in the case of sailing a full production team) for the bulk of the events on the 24 streams is quite an accomplishment. (Not all streams have commentary - but the bulk of them do)

Those are what as described as "Red Button" feeds - they aren't considered or referred to as specific channels and the BBC won't mention the numbers available because our Freeview OTA platform only has 2 extra Red Button channels (1 HD/SD simulcast and 1 post-1900 feed timeshared with a children's channel) The 24 HD and SD Red Button feeds are only available to viewers with cable or satellite (though they don't require a subscription as they are on the free satellite platform as well as Sky's pay-TV one) The BBC try to avoid mentioning the benefits of a specific platform so as not to be seen to favour one - and distort the market place. Remember the BBC is fiercely anti-commercial (to the extent that on many shows presenters have the North Face / Berghaus etc. logos masked on their clothing)

They quite often do a DVE move from the presenter shot pushing back to reveal a 25 way 5x5 mosaic of the feeds (or 24 feeds which 'might' be the feeds - I don't think the studio has access to the precise playout area outputs) to illustrate it - which is quite neat. (Sometimes they put this 5x5 mosaic in one of the studio plasmas and do a camera pull out from one of them to reveal the screen and then the studio)

Whilst all of the 24 HD (and SD simulcast) channels have channel numbers (450-473 for the HD channels on Sky) and full EPG listings, the easier way to navigate them is to "Press Red" (i.e. press the red button on your remote control) which will fire up an interactive digital text application that lets you search in a more flexible way than a linear EPG. You can search alphabetically for sport, find out what time the events are and then if that sport it is on it will take you to the right channel, or channels.

The "Press Red" interactive TV system is a UK standard across OTA, Cable and Satellite - they use different middleware and authoring systems but share a common mode of access (the red button) - and the BBC try to be as platform neutral as possible, though OTA bandwith is much more restricted (and they will be reducing the number of satellite streams they have post-Olympics) The coloured buttons you see on all European TV remotes were originally there to navigate "Fastext" (an upgrade to the Teletext system we have on analogue - and some European countries use on digital TV - broadcasts)

There is a next generation of "Press Red" coming - which will use IPTV delivery (iPlayer - the BBC equivalent of Hulu already does this on some broadcast platforms) to connected TVs, using the UK standard middleware rather than having to write bespoke apps for each manufacturer's chosen platform. This is not Flash or Silverlight based - it's effectively the same H264 format video in the same interlaced full-motion format as broadcast (though not always at the same bitrate)
Edited by sneals2000 - 8/2/12 at 11:59am

Not sure what you mean? NBC beat Fox for the bid, so if they hadn't, we'd be watching Fox, and based on their domestic sports coverage, a good bet they'd screw it up at least as bad as NBC. But the particular network doesn't really matter - network television here will most likely be the same no matter the particulars.

Didn't used to be like that decades ago, but my memory is that in the later years of ABC coverage they'd been moving in this direction (focusing on USA competitors and not the Olympics.) Single worst moment for domestic network television coverage for me was ABC's Jack Whitaker doing the women's team gymnastics. IIRC, the USA team was so-so, probably with one star. One of the girls messed up and Whitaker says, "Well, that didn't do us any good." Some 14 year old girl can't pull off some insanely difficult maneuver under the pressure of the Olympics as well as knowing they all have to be perfect to even have a chance to medal, and that's all he's got? Insults? And that was 20 years ago or whatever.

Network television is network television. The most roundly criticized Olympics coverage I remember was CBS, Now we have NBC. I just gave an example of horribleness from ABC. I seriously doubt if Fox would be any different, and based on their other major sports coverage, hard not to imagine it being worse.

The BBC swimming interviewer just thanked NBC on-air for not being live. It means the BBC get access to US swimmers first as soon they're out of the pool - as the BBC are live - with NBC OK to wait as they're not... So NBC being recorded isn't all bad

No worries NBC has bought the rights all the way up to 2020 at the cost of 4 point something billion USD. Canada won the bid to do 2016 but NBC still owns the IOC broadcasting rights. So if your in the majority like me screw USA's NBC coverage since 08 and just proxy the country of origin. NBC should really take a hard look at the BBC's commentary's and learn from a true professional we once had Mr. Jim Mckay (RIP)

IMO every Olympics they should switch networks, something fresh never hurts... and maybe they'll do a better effort.

Not sure what you mean there re: 2016. CBC won the rights from the IOC to broadcast in Canada (after joint bids with CTV failed?) - CTV have the rights this year in London. NBC won the rights from the IOC to broadcast in the USA. The BBC won the rights from the IOC to broadcast in the UK.

Each territory is handled separately by the IOC. What happens with NBC in the USA has no relevance to the rights for Canada. Or am I missing a point somewhere?

The BBC just do what they always do. They've got a home advantage this year - but have always gone very big on Olympic broadcasting (the IOC rate their coverage very highly aparently) Unlike the US, the BBC also has to cover the Commonwealth Games (a smaller scale Olympics open to the Commonwealth nations), as well as the World and European football championships - so probably get to do international large-scale sporting events a bit more often than NBC (are the Summer and WInter Olympics the only major international sporting events that NBC cover)?

BBC gets fisrt dibs in almost all intial interviews

Yep - as domestic rights holders I think they get first dibs in most. However NBC have 'special' status in some areas. (And I suspect the BBC would probably let US athletes talk to NBC first if NBC were live)

That's the thing.. everyone seems to make it seem like anyone other than NBC could do it better. Really, these networks have all done it out of the same playbook, and looking at the other options doesn't really show a better option.

Don't know if that would be the solution. If each network is only in it for 1 Olympics at a time, as they going to be as into it as a network that has multiple Olympics in front of them? Of course, any change in the U.S. rights holder would have to win the bid for it. And it's bid around 2 decades since that has happened.

Or they might not. Given how badly NBC has managed itself over the past years and the idiots in charge just on that basis alone NBC are worse than Fox. There is no way to predict how another network might have handled it.

All it would have taken for NBC not to have become a worldwide Olympic joke was to not edit out the memorial during the opening ceremony and air medal events live during the day and then replay them in prime time. Pretty simple thinking that any network could apply.