Jay Leonard
NBC’s decision to tape-delay many of the Olympic events has left many fans frustrated and aware of the result hours before it’s on TV
Just as “video killed the radio star,” social media has ruined the Olympics.
“Ruined” might be a tad too harsh, but it has certainly sucked a lot of the fun out of it.
In 1999, effort was made to circumvent that “one friend” who would likely blurt out the surprise plot twist of The Sixth Sense before others had seen it. Now, we live in an electronically connected universe filled with “that guy” blabbermouths—who are not nearly as easy to avoid. Between being active on multiple social networks and having a bevy of news/score alerts coming directly to our smartphones, we’re the picture of a society obsessed with knowing it all, and knowing it now. And for the most part, that instantaneousness has been awesome. Until it wasn’t.
Sitting in front of an HD flatscreen (which single-handedly made me a fan of golf on TV) over the weekend, I anxiously awaited the showdown between Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, which I (in hindsight, foolishly) thought would be covered live at 2:30pm. As the seconds past race-time ticked by, I realized either something was up, or the biggest story of the Olympics would not be played out on TV until prime-time…That is, until my phone beeped, and CNNmobile told me who won.
At that moment, I threw my hands in the air and yelled some four-letter words to Ted Turner.
In fairness, if it wasn’t CNN ruining it, then it would have been Twitter or Facebook, or any other number of up-to-the-second information exchange platforms.
American swimmer Nathan Adrian won a thrilling race in the 100M, but many knew of the result before it was aired on NBC
While I typically adore being in the loop on everything happening in the world—important or not (I felt like Kim Kardashian informed me personally that she was ending her 73 day marriage), this was like a punch to the gut.
The magic of the Olympics comes from the drama of the competition, and knowing that at any moment the unexpected can happen. The lack of live TV coverage in combination with the immediate nature of today’s information swapping, is like a magician revealing their secrets. Basically, Twitter just spilled the beans about Santa Claus.
Are we at the point where we must accept that huddling around a 13-inch computer monitor 24/7 is the only way to ensure we’re not tipped off on what happens on the world’s biggest stage? Or, has the time come to unplug? As simple as that sounds, the fact remains, the times of changed—even since Beijing. And while spoilers have always been an issue with all sports to some extent, today, committing to a spoil-free Olympics requires essentially an entire lifestyle alteration—canceling updates, resisting feed-checks, abstaining from news sites, and the old classic: avoiding water-cooler chatter. For most people, that’s not likely, or even possible.
There are endless ways in which social media technology has changed life for the better. But the Olympics? Just might not be one of them. That is, unless you were okay with knowing that Bruce Willis was really a dead guy.
(Photo Courtesy of www.twitchy.com)
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Trying to push back the tide of social media seems a bit like Canute who was supposed to have tried to stop the tide coming in. But the real problem here is not twitter or social media but NBC. If they showed the events in real time, this issue would go away and you could tweet your thoughts real time as the global events unfold. A delay ruins the entire thing but this is the broadcaster’s fault, rather than twitter’s.
Exactly. It seems the article has it backwards. Technology and social media are not going to change. It’s the broadcasters that need to adapt to the advancements in media. I know many people can’t get to a TV during the day, and that sucks. But if NBC would show the events live, they can please the people who want to watch it live, and the people that don’t then can’t blame the network from being spoiled.