One of the questions you, as an Olympics-consuming adult
must ask yourself, is: did I have a Twitter or Facebook account in July of
2008, when the Summer Olympics were held in Peiping? (That’s the way they spelled Beijing when I
was in grade school.)
If the answer is “yes”, you’re probably not a bit disturbed
at the way NBC is presenting coverage of the London Olympics. If the answer is “no”, you’re probably over
35, and you’re unhappy about all the spoilers being posted on social media.
Many years ago, we became an instant-gratification
society. Can’t afford it? Put it on a
credit card and get it now. Domino’s Pizza
30-minute delivery guarantee. Sentry
Foods guarantee that if there are more than two people in the check-out line,
they’ll open another register. (I think
they let that one slide years ago.)
Drive-up banking. H and R Block
instant tax refund.
But, like any axiom, there are exceptions. Because of the way TV is programmed these
days, we avoid “spoilers” until we’ve seen the program or episode. On any given Sunday night, my wife and I are
now DVR’ing Breaking Bad, True Blood, The Newsroom, Mad Men (in season), Dexter
(in season), Homeland (in season), Political Animals, Ice Road Truckers (guess
which one of us watches that show), Real Housewives of New York (or New Jersey
or Orange County or Beverly Hills – again, guess which one of us watches that
one). Is it any wonder I gave up on Falling
Skies and The Killing? Sunday night
overload.
Sometimes, in fact, often, we don’t see a Sunday night show
until Wednesday or Thursday night. Much
of the TV we have decided to watch runs on Sunday night, and the DVR (with
multiple tuners and the capability of recording more than one channel at a
time) has made us the Program Director – just as the advent of the Sony Walkman
(and the later mp3 players) gave the consumer the power of the radio station
Program Director. You never have to wait
to hear a song you like.
NBC paid about 1.2 billion dollars for the rights to
televise the Olympics; NBC is a business; and businesses operate under a profit
motive. Did NBC pay too much? Of course.
NFL Football isn’t even sustainable; the aggregate television rights
cost more than the money recouped through advertising, but - ya gotta have it. NFL Football was the true genesis of the Fox
Network. (Not to be confused with Fox News,
which was a virgin birth.)
I watched Super Bowl XLV, in February of 2011, in which the
Pack beat the Steelers, from the comfort of my media room at home: 66-inch
HDTV, 500 watts of surround sound, soft seat, cold beer, hot snacks. My wife was a few feet away and we were the
only two (not counting the dogs) who were in the room, but I shared the
experience, via Facebook and my iPad, with friends in Appleton, Los Angeles,
and Minneapolis (and, everywhere else, for that matter). There’s just enough time between plays to
type something like “that WAS NOT a catch” or “the ump blew that call”.
You can be angry about the Olympics spoilers that pop up on
Twitter and Facebook, and you can shake your fist at NBC for not televising the
Olympics the way YOU want it, but it’s not likely to change soon. The television business paradigm hasn’t
caught up to the instant-communication realities of 2012. NBC is going to milk the marquee events for
every dollar they can, time-shifting them to “prime time” when they can charge
the highest ad rates.
There are huge changes ahead in the way live TV events like
the Olympics will be televised, but I’m not smart enough to hazard a guess on
what will be changed, and not stupid enough to hazard a guess on how they’ll be
changed. I do think we’ll look back on
the 2012 Olympics as the point where change began.
