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NBC says they hear the criticism of their XXX Summer Olympics coverage. “Some of it is fair, and we are listening,” said NBC Sport’s Mark Lazarus today. “We knew it wasn’t going to be perfect,” added the Group Chairman. Asked about NBC editing out the fall of Russia’s Ksenia Afanasyeva in Tuesday’s gymnastics event to create suspense for a U.S. team Gold win, Lazaus said it was cut “in the interests of time”. He added that “it was immaterial to the outcome” of the U.S. team’s Gold win. “All of the drama was about the US performance, not what the Russians did or did not achieve, said Lazarus. “It did nothing to alter the suspense”. In a conference call from London, Lazarus and NBC Research’s Alan Wurtzel sought to address the criticism that the network has received for its tape delay of the XXX Summer Olympics from London, most noticeably the Opening Games on July 27. Noting time zone difference and other limitations, the NBC Sports boss said “our preference is to do things live”. Lazarus added that he hopes the 2016 Olympics Opening Ceremony from Rio will be live. Lazarus also said that it was a “regretful” moment when a promo was shown on the East Coast of Missy Franklin winning a gold medal before the race was actually broadcast in the States and the network has installed a back-up system to ensure such a mistake doesn’t happen again. “We will continue to innovate our coverage”, Lazarus noted later “There is no way for us to show all live action in the US in primetime,” he said. “With so many simultaneous events going on, you cannot physically show everything live”, added the Group Chairman. “The ratings are strong and our business partners are pleased”, said Lazarus, reiterating that NBC will break even on the Games and predicting they might even make “a little bit of money.” NBC are “over delivering in all areas” on air, online and social media, Lazarus also noted. During its first days, the London Olympics have consistently beaten the 2008 Beijing Games in the ratings. The Olympics from the UK drawing over 35.8 million viewers on the opening weekend, making it the most watched Summer Games opening weekend ever. Wurtzel predicted that the London Games could well end up being in the Top 5 most watched TV events ever.
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Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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“There is no way for us to show all live action in the US in primetime,”
Primetime is 7pm-12pm eastern so 12pm-5am London time = NOTHING LIVE IS HAPPENING DURING YOUR PRIMETIME PERIOD!
I think you mean 12am
Yes sorry, i meant AM, I was so infuriated by this i made a mistake.
This is the reason I don’t watch. How can anyone enjoy a competition when a broadcaster has the power to determine an athlete’s performance, good or bad, is “immaterial to the outcome?” What outcome, the advertisers?
Worst coverage in years of the Olympic Games And the on site reporters are really not good…starting with Andrea Kramer (sp) Far too many commercial breaks, actually more commercials than action.
What B.S. Removing even one of those useless glam-shot puff bumpers of the U.S. gymnasts gazing soulfully into the camera would have enabled them to squeeze in one more gymnastics routine.
“All of the drama was about the US performance, not what the Russians did or did not achieve, said Lazarus. “It did nothing to alter the suspense”.
What a supremely arrogant statement! Who is an NBC programming executive to decide what “all of the drama” about a sporting event entails? They act like it’s unreasonable for us to expect to see our team’s major competitors’ successes and failures as well.
Exactly! This is like saying New York TV should only broadcast the Yankee’s at bat because what the Sox’s do on offense is unimportant to the drama and outcome of the game. How do sports business journalists let this kind of mentality get a free pass?
Another Exactly! Mark Lazyass should be out of a job before the chalk dust settles.
First NBC says they’ll lose money on the Olympics. Then they said they’ll break even, now they’re saying they’ll make some profit. This type of obsufation is what makes people critical of their coverage. Am I to believe that the peacock network, when buying rights to the Olympics, they never intended to make a profit? What publicaly traded company does that? I mean, they could claim it as a loss/leader, intending to make profit in ancillary products, but their weak primetime schedule seems an odd place to do that. NBC’s business model is what, 50 years old? You think someone with in Universal/NBC would understand social media and how every decsion they make (hilariously thinking it’s private) will be disseminated through it. Their gaffes are as historic as their ratings, but will they learn from their mistakes, or continue to use a flawed business model, fearful of taking the risk (and the money) that will be needed to go forward?
One reason they buy the rights to the Olympics is because it gives them the chance to promote the rest of the detritus you can see on NBC. (Don’t miss “Go On” destined to be this years years “Whitney”!)
I hate the justification that the ratings are great and all the business partners are happy. Yes we watch because we are interested and there is little viable alternative for most, but that doesn’t mean the coverage doesn’t totally suck just because ratings are good. Even some of the lame commentary has to be spoken in the past tense acknowledging what we are watching for the first time already happened and the commentators know the outcome. It has taken all of the thrill out of watching. And who decided I only care about the American participants? I’m excited by watching and cheering on the world’s greatest athletes I don’t give a damn what country they are from! And Ryan Seacrest? I’m not even a Ryan Seacrest basher, I think he’s pretty great at what he does, but he does NOT belong on Olympic duty, it just seems bizarre every time he pops up. I’ve been watching the Olympics for 50 years now and this coverage is easily the worst in memory. Gone are the glory days of ABC and Jim McKay.
I agree; Im not a Seacrest hater either, but watching him constantly popping up on Today and Primetime, is really making me start to not like him. For some reason, he seems out of place…but NBC is probably testing him as Lauers potential replacement.
As for live…NBCU (and add Comcast) have so many ch
When saying Rio opening will be live in 2016, is NBC including Mountain and Pacific Time Zones, or will they time shift as normal (as they did for Vancouver, which was in the same time zone as California et al, but for which we got nothing live except for the hockey final)?
RIP (Retire in Peace) Dick Ebersol. Boy, are you ever missed.
Wurtzel and Lazarus are liars or they are idiots. Probably both. They showed the Russian girls crying and the viewers really did not know what caused their tears. They should just admit they screwed up and apologize and they should show the routine they cut out tonight during the women’s all-around finals. Also stop waiting until 10 pm to show gymnastics they do this to keep the viewers hooked but it’s not fair to all the young kids who want to watch. Gymnastics is the most popular sport for young kids all of whom should be able to see it starting at 8 pm.
Im watching the Womens All Around LIVE right now online so I do give NBC credit – they are showing events live – you just ahve to watch them online in stead of on TV…so if you really want to – and youre at work (where you probably dont ahve a TV anyway) you can. But if you go fullscreen, you get 2 ads on the screen at ALL times, and the stream seems to have tons of commercials – seems like every 5-10 minutes, there are more commercials…and there are often breaks…It doesnt seem its the normal NBC announcers either so I dont know if theyre using a pool coverage or what
Yeah, online. As long as they know which cable provider you’re indebted to first. If you’re not already paying one of their corporate buddies, there is no “live” in this country.
Oh and its in HD which my TV isn’t…but the video does seem to have a lot of glitches even though Im on a high speed Comcast connection
I was so frustrated Tuesday night with the coverage. After Aly Reisman’s beam routine, NBC went to a commercial as everyone was waiting to hear her score. They came back from commercial to a Russian gymnast on the beam, with no mention whatsoever of what the USA gymnast’s score was! They did this again later too. If “all of the drama was about the US performance,” NBC couldn’t even get coverage of that right.
NOTE TO NBC: As with news, your job for a sporting event is to cover and broadcast the event – not to try to CREATE OR AUGMENT THE DRAMA yourselves.
“All of the drama was about the US performance, not what the Russians did or did not achieve, said Lazarus. “It did nothing to alter the suspense”. – so i guess Mark has never watched or been to a sporting event? You, as a fan, want to see everything that transpires. Anything less is a joke, and a slightly false version of events.
NBC’s coverage has been ruthlessly mercenary — prime-time advertising is all they care about. Absurdly pro-USA editing & editorializing during the Olympics, which I thought was about the nations of the world joining together to glorify their athletic prowess. Athletic competition, not commercial competition. The on-line coverage is glitchy thanks to ads every 5 seconds. No one bothered to mention that a natural audio feed was available to avoid hearing the shrill narrative. Signing in to a watch a live event even if you subscribe to an NBC ‘partner’ is miserable. The athletes are marvelous to watch when you can watch them, but NBC sucks the joy dry. RIP Dick Ebersole, for sure.
Of course it was. Who on earth tunes in to the Olympics to watch medals won and lost in dramatic fashion? I mean, a world champion making a catastrophic mistake, how BORING. Just give us more pre-packaged cheese, please.
I have edited NBC off my viewing schedule for everything, in the interest of time. All programming on this network is now ‘immaterial’.
Wolf, you said it! LMAO!
Even if you’ve managed to avoid the news and are TRYING to experience some suspense, it is maddening to hear Bob Costas say, as he did about a gymnast about to mount his apparatus, “He needs to be almost perfect, but it was not to be.” Way to go, spoilers!
Try as I do to defend NBC, they INSIST on making it impossible.
First off, we don’t need “suspense.” The fact that it’s THE OLYMPICS is enough of a reason to watch.
And during gymnastics, after spending all that time talking about deductions and such, SHOW THE DAMN SCORES!
(Actually, I miss the old days when Bart Conner would actually talk us through the moves we were watching, like Reverse Hecht, Deltchev, Gienger, Yurchenko, Tsukahara, etc.)
I miss that too! The gymnastic commentators keep talking, but they aren’t talking about the tricks the athletes are performing. I also think the editing of the men’s gymnastics has been worse than the women’s. We don’t see the rings event. We don’t see any other countries’ athletes competing until the packaged ending. We don’t get to see John Orozco at all after his pommel horse performance. It was like NBC edited him out of the competition. He moved up from last place to 8th place, but NBC thinks the only important drama is showing who medals.
Even if you avoid all spoilers and watch the events on tv, you know exactly what is going to happen just based on how NBC is packaging the show and the editing the commentators have clearly done after the events. We are only watching NBC’s highlight reel vs. an actual competition.
Can we also agree that there would be more time to watch the events without the inane amount of time NBC is spending on showing us what is happening on social media? If you use twitter/facebook etc. we don’t need it explained to us and if people aren’t using it they don’t care.
Tape delay vs live? Editing a sporting event for ratings? Not important. The real drama was how these 2 suits decided which one would go before the TCA reporters and – keeping a straight face – tell them one of the most blatant lies in the history of Television — where lying an artform. Proving again – no lie is too stupid to tell. No matter what – deny deny deny.
“We were just editing for time. REALLY! Had no choice! Forced to cut :20 from our highest rated sport during our alloted all-day-round-the-clock coverage” I’M SERIOUS! What? Cut the fall of the reigning world champ? MAYBE!! We never looked at what shots we cut. STOP LAUGHING!! Ok! Ok! So what! It doesn’t matter! Thank you – I’m outta here”.
Fortunately for them – there are no real reporters at the TCA.
Thank you! It is infuriating to watch all the drama/suspense/build-up of waiting for scores, then NBC shows you a lot of facial reactions but not the damn score. Everyone on-screen is looking up at the scoreboard (I’m specifically talking about women’s gymnastics here), and when the big reveal comes, neither the NBC graphics nor the announcers tell us what the score is. What the hell? I get it, somebody won and somebody lost and yes, this is dramatic. But many of us would like to know the actual score that caused this result and reaction!! How is that so hard?
The coverage has been totally crap! It revolves around money! NBC took a commercial break during the women’s 800 meter freestyle final last night, after it hyped the race to no end. Furthermore, I cannot watch the replays I want to see because my cable subscription only includes CNBC but not MSNBC. But, if I upgrade my subscription (i.e. pay more $$$), I can have access to what I want to watch. It is all summed up in Lazarus’ statement: “The ratings are strong and our business partners are pleased”, said Lazarus…”
I call on all viewers to turn out the TV during the commercials.
NBC, you DO NOT own the olympic games, the people do. I wish there would be a congressional hearing on this topic and our lawmakers would return the games to the people.
NBC, shame on you for horrible, greed-based coverage!
The commentary on the closing ceremony has been a complete disaster. The commentatators have no clue what is happening, and their only contribution is to introduce the commercial breaks. They have obviously made no attempt to be briefed on events. Why do educated consumers put up with such complete garbage?