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Shame on you NBC and Animal Practice producers for ruining the Olympics! You owe an apology!


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Last night's closing ceremony broadcast was a shame!! Why screw the viewers enjoyment by wanting to televise a show about monkey's? It does not surprise me that they did this(they did it in Vancouver by showing The Marriage Ref.) They owe an apology for yet another embarassment. Show the thing live!!

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Yet Americans watched in record numbers! It's hard to convince NBC to change when 30+ million people watched the coverage every night, no matter how much they complained about it.

Fair enough..... but they do hit and miss alot in the rating at different olympics, arguably aside from host olympics the others all have a consistent trend onward and upward. Anyway the worst coverage was in Australia this year on the Free To Air Nine Network, luckily they joint bid for the rights with a local pay tv service that did great coverage and 8 Live HD channels. BBC coverage was great though, as expected.

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Yet Americans watched in record numbers! It's hard to convince NBC to change when 30+ million people watched the coverage every night, no matter how much they complained about it.

To bad the only thing we saw was commercials. I was at a mall and they were people enjoying watching the games and then a commercial. Sure 30 million people watch the Commercials sorry the Olympics.

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Last night's closing ceremony broadcast was a shame!! Why screw the viewers enjoyment by wanting to televise a show about monkey's? It does not surprise me that they did this(they did it in Vancouver by showing The Marriage Ref.) They owe an apology for yet another embarassment. Show the thing live!!

Dear viewers,

We're sorry you're all so hopelessly in love with the Olympics that you'll do exactly what we want you to do while we rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising as a result.

Sincerely,

NBC

Seriously though.. I think it's a travesty they did that and it's the sign of a 4th place network (out of 4) that they would resort to something like that for a 2nd Olympics in a row. But from a business standpoint, these Olympics have been a huge success for them, so I doubt they give 2 craps if people are pissed so long as they're tuning in.

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To bad the only thing we saw was commercials. I was at a mall and they were people enjoying watching the games and then a commercial. Sure 30 million people watch the Commercials sorry the Olympics.

There were actually fewer commercials this year than in past years. NBC showed only 52 minutes of commercials during each 4-hour primetime broadcast, which is 8 minutes less than usual. There were many nights when they had a block of 25 or 30 minutes of uninterrupted coverage, which was much better than in the past.

Fair enough..... but they do hit and miss alot in the rating at different olympics, arguably aside from host olympics the others all have a consistent trend onward and upward. Anyway the worst coverage was in Australia this year on the Free To Air Nine Network, luckily they joint bid for the rights with a local pay tv service that did great coverage and 8 Live HD channels. BBC coverage was great though, as expected.

Of the 10 Olympics that NBC has covered since Seoul, only two have been ratings disasters--Sydney 2000 and Torino 2006. Sydney was largely NBC's fault--that was by far their worst Olympic broadcast, IMO. They chose to show absolutely nothing live, and because many of the events aired 24 hours after they happened, NBC covered them as lengthy, dramatic fluff pieces instead of presenting them as actual competitions. The result was that a lot of people tuned out because they already knew the results and didn't care to sit through NBC's horrid, saccharine narrations by the likes of Harry Smith and Al Trautwig. NBC learned from Sydney and actually made a lot of changes to the format of the primetime broadcast. They cut down significantly on the number of profiles and fluff pieces, and they stopped presenting competitions as narrated dramas and instead focused on actually showing the events. In 2008, they also manufactured the schedule to show marquee events live in primetime instead of having to showing everything on tape like they did in 2000.

I don't think there was anything NBC could have done to prevent the Torino ratings disaster. That Olympics was a perfect storm of the American Idol juggernaut coupled with a very disappointing performance by marquee American athletes and a very uninspiring setting in an industrial Italian city. Both FOX and ABC aggressively programmed against the Olympics and were very successful in drawing away viewers, especially once Bode Miller bombed and Michelle Kwan withdrew due to injury. I don't think live coverage would have made a difference in 2006, either--American Idol was just too popular--and NBC did the best it could to make the coverage appealing. They still made about $60 million in profit off of those Games, so it wasn't a financial disaster. The addition of more snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, which attract young viewers, should help to prevent Sochi from being as big of a disaster as Torino.

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thanks for the insight Barcelona! Channel NIne for london, will likely be considered the worst olympic coverage in australia's recent history. It was also the first summer games for the network for the past 20 + years, though I don't know if they are capable of learning from their mistakes like NBC did.:P

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I think the most annoying thing was that they aired Animal Practice commercial-free, but wanted to remind us of that fact via commercials during the Olympics. The irony was so thick.

It's like "Hey Olympic fans, we know that you hate commercials, so we're gonna air this pre-recorded show for you commercial-free! Oh and we'll keep reminding you about that show during the Olympics using advertising slots to tell you about this show. That's right, we're paying ourselves for these advertising slots to tell you about this show, which we will air without ads, because we know you hate ads. Love ya!"

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Do Americans watch in droves because they love NBC's coverage of the Games or because they love the Games themselves? I think it is because they love the Games, and as the official US broadcaster, they pretty much have no choice but to watch them on NBC, as NBC presents them. NBC just takes advantage of it. But Americans don't punish them during the Olympics...they save that for 'Must Not See TV' and tune after the Games to watch the regular line up on CBS and Fox instead.

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thanks for the insight Barcelona! Channel NIne for london, will likely be considered the worst olympic coverage in australia's recent history. It was also the first summer games for the network for the past 20 + years, though I don't know if they are capable of learning from their mistakes like NBC did. :P

Don't be that mad, you guys don't have TV Record...

Look at their intro and you will visualize how poor were their broadcasts...

The worst in the history of Olympic coverage in Brazil!

I'm lucky I had Sportv!

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Could the alleged pathetic coverage of NBC and their preference for putting commercial gain ahead of the spirit games, by not showing events life, editing out sections, breaking important Olympic events for other programming, unofficially cause IOC members who vote for games hosts to have second thoughts about a US games with the fear of Atlanta No2 being potentially realised underming the spirit of the Olympics. Not true of course but this conduct by NBC might be creating this impression.

Major US sponsors like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Visa etc are global businesses who really couldn't care where the games were held and you wonder if NBC has done the US a major disservice with repurcussions beyond its mediocre coverage.

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The impression I get of American enthusisim is when they are hosting the Games its full on...But total indifference at other times due to time zone schedualling.

Surely in the era of pay-for-view a cable network could've multi channeled the event? Even NZ had eight channels of choice on its Sky network.

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they pay billions but screw the people who want to see it, how stupid

NBC is a business. Their primary goal is to make money, not perform a public service for viewers and making them happy. If they can't accomplish both, which of those 2 do you think they'll choose? I know it's a little callous to think that way, but that's the reality of how television works in the United States. These networks play to the lowest common denominator almost every time, and that goes way beyond the Olympics.

Could the alleged pathetic coverage of NBC and their preference for putting commercial gain ahead of the spirit games, by not showing events life, editing out sections, breaking important Olympic events for other programming, unofficially cause IOC members who vote for games hosts to have second thoughts about a US games with the fear of Atlanta No2 being potentially realised underming the spirit of the Olympics. Not true of course but this conduct by NBC might be creating this impression.

Major US sponsors like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Visa etc are global businesses who really couldn't care where the games were held and you wonder if NBC has done the US a major disservice with repurcussions beyond its mediocre coverage.

IOC: "We're a little concerned about your coverage, it seems there's a lot of criticism out there and a lot of angry complaints. Maybe you shouldn't be our television partner in the United States?"

NBC: "Here's $4.4 billion for the next 4 Olympics"

IOC: "Nevermind, we're all good. Thank$$$$"

Folks.. this happens EVERY Olympics in the United States. People complain about the coverage every time and have for decades. This is nothing new, the complaining just got a lot more centralized thanks to Twitter. Pretty sure the IOC is looking at the ratings NBC pulled in and couldn't be happier. I doubt any IOC member is concerned about what's coming out of NBC. If anything, they look at the ratings as a good sign that there was a tremendous amount of interest in these Olympics and would love to bring them to the United States to see how high the bar can go. I know a lot of non-Americans here are looking at the situation and wondering how NBC can operate the way they do. I'd hardly call it a disservice to viewers when the Olympics are drawing TV viewership (in the middle of the summer, no less) that the NFL would love to get for football games.

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