Angry you can’t watch your favorite Olympic events live? You’re probably too young…

NBC can’t make everyone happy, so... 

NBC On Olympics Coverage: 'Sorry We Didn't Alter The Laws Of Space And Time To Accommodate People's Schedules'

Okay, that was a story from the Onion’s web site, but I’m sure some execs probably feel that way about the complaints people are making that the network is not giving them some of the major events live.  Even funnier are the people who tweeted their complaints about NBC reporters tweeting event results because they didn’t want to know them before watching them later.   Let me get this straight: you’re using Twitter, a font of instantaneous information, to complain about receiving instantaneous information.   Okay then.

Complaints aside, NBC’s numbers have been pretty excellent, live broadcasts or delayed.   Indeed this is why a noted match between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte was broadcast in prime time, hours after the event actually took place in London: there are more eyeballs still watching their TV sets at home than are using their mobile devices.   The diehard fan of a given event – swimming, gymnastics – is probably diehard enough to watch that event via live streaming.   The more casual viewer is more likely to be drawn in by the stories the network presents as they rebroadcast coverage from earlier in the day.   And the Olympics are pretty unique as sporting events go; we don’t necessarily feel that knowing the result ruins our experience of watching them afterward. 

Part of that’s because the Olympics have so many individual sporting competitions, in contrast to the dominant television sports that are team-oriented.   It’s easier to be drawn in to a compelling human story, like that of Kayla Harrison, who has survived sexual abuse to become the first American to win gold in Judo.   Part of the appeal is also national pride.   The most dramatic Olympic story of my youth was the Miracle on Ice, and that was broadcast on a tape delay.  I knew the U.S. had beaten the Russians, but it was still an unbelievably exciting thing to watch.   (Things like that only happened every twenty years, you know!)  

I am of the last generation of viewers who grew up with only three commercial broadcast networks.   Many events I saw via programs like ABC’s Wide World of Sports were tape-delayed.  Indeed, there was a time when NBA Finals games were shown on a tape delay.  (And I lived on the east coast.   For those living out west a LOT more stuff was broadcast on a delay.)  Yes, it was also easier to avoid news about “the game” before you got your chance to see it, but it wasn’t like the local media were going out of their way not to report the scores.   So for people my age we don’t have as big a problem with NBC’s Olympics coverage as the young’uns.

Having said all that, there’s no question that with increased mobility and “on demand” entertainment, the younger generation of Olympics viewers will have less tolerance for watching “tape-delayed track and field events, or for that matter speed skating.  (The next Winter Games are in Sochi, Russia, so NBC better be ready for angry tweets in two years.) As information has become increasingly mobile, the viewer is not going to need to come home in the evening and watch events he/she has already watched during the day. (Of course, worker productivity might bedown a lot as more are more of us do that.)  As that time comes the networks who broadcast the Games will have to find more innovative packaging to keep that audience interested – or just hope that people of my generation live a lot longer.