Winner At A Losing Game

Up to this point, I have been pretty satisfied by NBC's coverage of the London Olympics. Other than the hosts narrating the Opening Ceremony like it was the Rose Bowl Parade and producers cutting out a tribute to victims of terrorist attacks because they weren't Americans, then adding insult to injury by replacing it with Ryan Seacrest, I don't have any real complaints. I've actually found the coverage spread out on other NBC Universal channels to be quite thorough. However, I am clearly in the minority, because every day you can go on most social media outlets and read comment after comment from people who are unhappy with the way NBC has decided to tape-delay sports such as gymnastics and swimming, which viewers are always interested in, for their prime-time hours. (I'll be honest with you, the fact that I don't actually care about these sports goes a long way in keeping my emotions in check. If they were tape-delaying something important I would be up in arms. But, because they are holding back on showing me things I wouldn't watch under normal circumstances and therefore don't watch in prime-time, my ire towards the peacock network is running pretty low at the moment.) Also, if these people think their complaints are going to bring a change in policy, they shouldn't get their hopes up because NBC has continued to pull in strong ratings, even for the events which have been over for almost 7 hours.

Still, I do wonder about this policy going forward. As I have said many time before in this space, this is an on-demand world now and things are only going to keep heading in that direction in the future. Depriving your customers of the things they want to see at the time they want to see it is not a recipe for building viewer loyalty. (And it is not like NBC is in the position to dictate terms to viewers anymore. The days of "Cheers", "Seinfeld", "Friends" and "Frasier" seem as though they were a lifetime ago.) In this day and age where even the most amateurish of internet users can find their way to a site circumventing broadcast rights if they put their mind to it, people are going to find a way to watch things live, so the more you can give them the better. I know people on the internet are going to find something to complain about regardless of how much access NBC gives its viewers, because that is what people on the internet do. But, if those people are going to forgo watching your programming through the normal routes than you should at least make sure they are going to still watch your programming through a method you control. Why pay all this money for broadcasting rights if we all know people are just going to end up watching the online feed of an international channel? If you're willing to let all those viewers go (and I do wonder if NBC has any idea of just how many of them there are) you may as well have let ESPN win the broadcasting rights.

I also think NBC is focusing on the wrong thing. They point out that the tape-delayed games are still pulling in good ratings numbers, but that just feels short-sighted to me. Deep down they have to know that this is only happening because it is the summer and they are against reruns. If they were against fresh programming they might not be winning so handily. It also helps that the swimming and gymnastics competitions have been full of drama. I don't think they would have this success if they were trying to talk the American public into watching a rowing competition in which the United States doesn't have anyone in the medal round. On top of all that, I'm starting to have questions about how much ratings still matter to people outside the entertainment industry. (I contend this is why viewers who only watch their shows online are so shocked to find out their favorite sitcoms are about to be cancelled for low ratings.) It might not be too long before having the highest Nielsen ratings is like having the highest circulation among newspapers. Congratulations, you're the most successful company in a dying industry. I know you can only measure success by the standards of the moment, but at some point NBC (and all these other networks) are going to have to start figuring out a way to measure how many actual eyeballs are watching, not guessing based on one or two ratings boxes every 500 miles.

The good news for NBC is that I don't think this will be as much of a problem for the 2014 Sochi Games, because Russia is so many time zones ahead of us that I question how many people will be awake to watch events live anyway. However, by the time games get to Rio in 2016 they need to have this problem sorted out, because people are not going tolerate being asked to hold off on finding results for an event which is only one time zone ahead of the East Coast. I don't know if the answer is saying "forget the ratings", airing everything as it happens and sorting out the results with advertisers later or offering some kind of program which would allow people to control more of which sports they get in real time through the internet, but I just know the current plan is not going to hold up for another four years. People are simply too plugged in and impatient to wait for several hours to watch something where they already know the ending and that trend shows no signs of reversing as we head into the future. Newspapers are finally starting to figure this out, I just wonder how long it will take TV networks to do the same.