Is it too much to expect NBC’s Olympics coverage to be less packaged? The answer may depend on whether you expect to be …
olympics
Tuned InTelevision
The Morning After: NBC Shoots, Scores With Live Soccer
This past weekend, I went on NPR’s On the Media to talk about NBC’s practice of tape-delaying big Olympic events until primetime—a strategy that had earned the network big ratings, big ad money and the enmity of a subset of fans who’ve had to wait until hours after the world knew results to watch the events on TV.
Well, credit where …
Tuned InTelevision
Dead Tree Alert: The Thrill of Video Vs. the Agony of Tape-Delay
I’ve taken my digs over the past week at NBC’s TV coverage of the London Olympics, but I also have to give credit where it’s due. The network’s decision to livestream every competition from the games–however buggy and dependent …
PopulistPopulist
Rings ‘n’ Things: 10 Best Facts About the Olympics in Pop Culture
Tarzan, Cool Runnings and The Simpsons—TIME takes a look at the ways the Olympics have crossed into pop culture
Tuned InNews Media
When Twitter Becomes the Tweet Police
It was — to paraphrase Twitter’s own terminology for when it crashes — a whale of a fail. The social-media service, and NBC, apologized for the suspension of a British reporter, critical of NBC’s Olympics coverage, who tweeted the e-mail of an NBC executive to his followers.
Tuned InTelevision
NBC’s Olympic Livestreaming Is a Step Forward. But Is It a Permanent One?
Let me say upfront that complaining about the quality and immediacy of one’s video options for watching the Olympics in the comfort of my home is, more literally than usual, a First World problem. It’s what we do every two years, …
11 Olympic Theme Songs, Dissected
How does this year’s Olympic theme song, Muse’s “Survival”, stack up against the competition?
Tuned InTelevision
NBC’s Unkind Olympic Cut
I saw the London Olympics opening ceremony late, on Pacific Time—my colleague Catherine Mayer reviews it elsewhere at time.com—but it was a spectacle and a hoot, in the best sense of both words. Where Beijing’s 2008 ceremony …
Tuned InTelevision
NBC Sets Fall Schedule, Hopes You Don’t Have Plans in August
Beginning in late July, NBC will air the Olympics, which many, many people will watch. NBC also has to launch a new schedule of shows, whose success is not as certain a matter. To better connect the two, Thursday NBC announced a …
Tuned InUncategorized
NBC Keeps Olympics, Will Air Them (Sort of?) Live
NBC, which has had every Olympics the last two decades save 1994, has kept the games through 2020, despite competition from Fox and ESPN. Unlike its rival bidders, NBC had not promised to air the games live (and has in past years insisted on saving events for primetime on tape-delay). But after winning the bid today in Lausanne, …
Tuned InUncategorized
The Ice Mensch Cometh
Elsewhere on time.com Sean Gregory has a story about Stephen Colbert’s quest to get the Colbert Nation to fund U.S. Olympic speedskating. Turns out it’s not just a publicity ploy—well, maybe it is that too—but a serious shot in the arm that could save a prominent U.S. Olympic sport. Given the awesomeness of the sport and the obvious …
Tuned InUncategorized
Elmo, Michelle Obama to Indoctrinate Your Kids With Veggies
To usher in Sesame Street’s 40th year on air starting Nov. 10, First Lady Michelle Obama will be appearing on the show to continue to spread her radical/Marxist/fascist message about planting gardens and eating vegetables.
Having successfully turned an American city trying to get the Olympics into a partisan political issue, …
Tuned InUncategorized
Also, "Beijing" Actually a Studio Lot in Burbank
Following on the heels of that Olympics fireworks fiasco comes a New York Times report that the nine-year-old girl who sang a patriotic ballad in the opening ceremonies, while floating suspended from wires, was performing to another girl’s vocals. The kicker: the Olympic stagers apparently went with the switch because the seven-year-old …
