I've been sitting here quietly watching the talk about NBC's coverage, and I thought it might we worth comparing and contrasting NBC with what the BBC is doing in the UK for these Olympics.
The main channel - BBC1 - is just about all Olympics all the time. The only exceptions are for the news, and the primetime soap Eastenders (they literally throw the Olympic coverage to BBC2 for half an hour and then come back - very odd). Essentially it's around the clock coverage otherwise. This is all presented by various announcers in different parts of Rio each doing their own stints. So sometimes from a studio over the beach, and other times from within the Olympic Park. And the presenters are nearly all sports presenters - not breakfast show presenters for example. BBC2 shows "as live" coverage of what you missed in the small hours, from first thing in the morning for a few hours. But otherwise is the BBC's non-Olympic alternative. And BBC4 has also dropped all regular programming, and offers an alternative mix of fully presented sports until about 2am UK time. Beyond that, on digital platforms we get every sport live, almost always with a commentator, although sometimes with long gaps of silence. There are no ads of course. This will be the same set of fully produced feeds from Olympic Broadcasting Services that other broadcasters like NBC and NHK in Japan offer their viewers on their digital feeds. On my satellite platform I can watch 8 HD broadcast feeds (down from 24 in London), with the rest being offered via streaming platforms. In my case they're integrated into my TV set, so although these other streams are via IP, I can still watch on my actual TV. For the most part though, producers pick and choose the sports most likely to appeal to UK audiences and put them on one of the broadcast streams. The BBC has essentially sub-let some extra broadcasting capacity for the period of the games. Due to time differences, we get a different mix of sport in our peak although gymnastics, for example, seems to happen early enough that we get to see that live around the 10pm news. It has been swimming that has been notably ending the latest - finishing close to midnight local time. There's always an interesting question about how partisan the BBC's coverage should be and actually is. Britain has been pretty successful in recent Olympic cycles - not least in London - but isn't so successful that every single medal of whatever colour, isn't covered fully. You'd think the whole country was interested in kayaking when we won a gold in that on Wednesday, such was the coverage. And it certainly can't harm that diving has been squarely in peak with some British success this time around. Last night he track cycling started - something that Britain has invested a lot in. Consequently there was a lot of cycling in peak. Indeed it seems the IOC has scheduled track cycling with Europe in mind. I think I find the BBC's coverage a tiny bit jingoistic and a little bit too celebratory for my own tastes, but your mileage may vary. You notice it most when a medal is dependent on someone else making a mistake in their routine. Are the commentators "hoping" the competitors will screw up? What we don't get are endless pre-packaged films of athletes overcoming adversary to compete in the game, a la The X-Factor. And the games are treated as a sports event - even if it's one that has a wider than usual reach - hence rules explanations if needed. But we do see other competitors, and even if it's obvious a Brit is going to lose, we stay with coverage. That said, if it's a sport Britain's not really any good at - handball for example - you're not likely to see much, if any, coverage on the main channels. And live is just becoming more important than ever. Whenever GB wins a medal, my Twitter feed explodes with alerts and animated medal GIFs. The idea that I could somehow make it through to a primetime show without knowing the result ahead of time is just nonsense. Rio and London probably haven't been too bad for EST viewers - Rio especially. But Tokyo will be completely different. There's a 13 hour time difference to account for. Sure, that is close to Beijing, but our levels of digital connection will be so much greater... Anyway, if you know your way around a VPN, give iPlayer a whirl if you're interested. As it happens, Discovery (who own the Eurosport pan-European set of sports channels) has bought most European Olympic rights from 2018. The BBC already had 2018 and 2020 rights in the UK, but Discovery owns the rights for 2022 and 2024 in the UK. The BBC has already agreed sub-licencing deals with Discovery 2022 and 2024 in return for offering Discovery sub-licencing rights in 2018 and 2020. Sadly it seems that we might not get quite as full a set of free digital offerings in the future. Time will tell. As part of the deal, Discovery was supposed to be helping the IOC with their Olympic channel. But as has already been reported, that's launching as an online-only offering initially. Adam On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 6:55 AM, JW <redbu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I would strongly disagree that they weren't building to that game. Here > is > > part of Jim McKay's introduction: > > There's a lot I don't remember 36 years later, like what time the US-USSR > game actually started. If the second game started at 8:45, then the first > game must have been very late, if not over, when ABC went on the air, and > the Miracle was possible, if not certain. If the Soviets had been up 6-1 > when the telecast started, I don't think McKay would have expressed that > same excitement. Perhaps ABC would have shown more skiers and less hockey. > We'll never know, which is fine with me. > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. 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