SE P T E M B E R/ OC T O B E R 2 0 1 2 V I D E O • A G E 44 In the U.S., NBC has served as the television home for every Summer Olympic Games since the 1988 Seoul Games and every Winter Games since Salt Lake City in 2002. Led by the NBC Olympics division, the network has secured rights to future Games by outbidding ESPN and FOX. NBC put up U.S.$775 million for the upcoming 2014 Sochi, Russia Winter Olympics, $1.226 billion for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games, $963 million for the 2018 PyeongChang, South Korea Winter Games and $1.418 billion for the 2020 Summer Games (which have yet to be assigned a location), for a total bid amounting to $4.38 billion. Conversely, ESPN’s bid was $1.4 billion for 2014 and 2016, and Fox put up $1.5 billion for 2014 and 2016, and $3.4 billion for all three — up to 2020. Broadcast rights — particularly U.S. broadcast rights — are the main source of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) revenues, which also include money from sponsorships, ticketing and licensing. From 2005-2008, broadcast rights provided the IOC with $2.57 billion — nearly half of its total revenues — and about 60 percent of that total came from NBC. Thanks to the higher cost of broadcast rights, IOC president Jacques Rogge announced that the IOC’s reserves have grown from $105 million to $558 million since 2001. Reportedly, from its Lausanne, Switzerland headquarters, the IOC distributes over 90 percent of Olympic revenue to world organizations throughout its Olympic Movement. The IOC retains under 10 percent of Olympic revenue for the operational and administrative costs of governing the Olympic Movement. For the 2012 London Olympics — for which NBC paid $1.181 billion — over 5,535 hours of coverage were available across NBC’s suite of channels: NBC, NBC Sports Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, Telemundo (with 173 hours of coverage in Spanish), two dedicated cable outlets and online services. This included over 3,000 hours of live streaming of 25 different sports (on the LiveExtra online channel), amounting to 2,000 more hours than were available from Beijing in 2008. The NBC TV network itself aired 272.5 hours, which is 50 hours more than it carried in Beijing in 2008. According to printed reports, NBC has found that live streaming-digital media did not have a devastating impact on primetime television, which influenced their decision to run popular events on tape delay in primetime. Additionally, NBC entered into a partnership with Panasonic North America to produce 242 hours of 3D footage, made available to viewers on satellite, cable and telecommunicationsbased platforms. However, 3D coverage was only available the day after each event took place. Another important NBC technical partner was Cisco, which developed a 10 Gbps Videoscape Internet Protocol (IP) network to transport content within the London International Broadcasting Centre (IBC), to the venues and to facilities in New York and Los Angeles. In addition, with Cisco’s Videoscape platform, NBC was able to deliver six live TV feeds of coverage to smartphones, tablets and hotel suites. For its coverage NBC took only parts of the OBS feeds (or mixed OBS feeds with its own cameras, as in the case of tennis coverage), relying mostly on its own studio facilities that handled 300 camera positions, including two from helicopters. These broadcast achievements were matched by the huge NBC technical structure that occupied 70,500 square meters of London’s IBC, located within Olympic Park, outside the city limits. And this doesn’t count the technical support of 650 people located in NBC’s New York studios. Nevertheless, all that goodwill and careful preparation did not spare NBC from a barrage of criticism that began with the Opening Ceremony and continued throughout the 17-day event due to awkward comments and embarrassing video juxtapositions. Specifically, NBC came under fire from the British press for editing out a section of the Opening Ceremony that was widely viewed as (though not officially said to be) a tribute to the victims of the 7/7/2005 terrorist attack in London. Rather than showing this moment, NBC cut to Ryan Seacrest’s interview of U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps. Critics have argued that NBC had ample opportunity to air this — and many other Phelps interviews — throughout the 17 days of Olympics coverage. The network was also criticized for airing the ceremony in primetime on tape delay and opting not to stream the event live online (they later streamed the Closing Ceremony). But that’s not all. Despite record audiences (the Opening Ceremony gained a 21 rating and 37 share, or 40.7 million people), some viewers complained of “boring” coverage and/ or insufficient sports being shown. Some critics pointed fingers at NBC’s main coverage for lingering to the point of boredom on the same event when they could have easily switched back and forth between other events running at the same time or those that took place earlier, since the primetime broadcast was pre-recorded anyway. It was noted that a Saturday or Sunday afternoon seemed the perfect time to broadcast a variety of events and event highlights, rather than air, for example, an entire water polo match in one sitting. According to official NBC press reports, NBC covered all 32 sports and 302 events (though, depending on whether the sports count came from the IOC, the OBS, various press reports or NBC itself, that number varied anywhere from 26 to 36). Yet the NBC Sports Network’s 292 hours of total coverage focused on “home team” sports — those events in which Team USA competed. Often excluded were sports popular with ethnic and immigrant groups living in the U.S., which were diverted into other NBC outlets such as Telemundo (for Spanish-language coverage of football or soccer, as it is called in the U.S.). AnothercriticismofNBC’sprimetime coverage was that the network focused on only a few sports (mainly swimming, gymnastics, diving, beach volleyball and track and field). Of course, these sports do tend to draw a large number of viewers. It’s hard to deny that showing a delayed sports competition in the Internet era is a great challenge for any broadcaster. So, the key here was not to focus on the winners (since the Internet and, in particular, competing TV networks, made sure winners were widely known before the NBC primetime broadcasts), but on the competitions themselves, highlighting key segments of all games — and not just a handful of sports. NBC Sparks Controversy with Olympics Coverage T h e L o n d o n G a m e s All that goodwill and careful preparation did not spare NBC from a barrage of criticism that began with the Opening Ceremony and continued throughout the 17-day event.
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