Whatever Olympics coverage looks like in 2032, be thankful NBC has it
On Wednesday, NBC agreed to a $7.65 billion deal to keep the Olympics on the network through 2032. For The Win shares a few thoughts about the deal. The gist: Other networks might do a good job with the Olympics, but we already know NBC does a great job. Stability is underrated. 1. NBC keeping the Olympics is excellent news for fans of the Olympics.NBC, which has been home of the Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Olympics since 2002, strikes the perfect balance in its coverage of the Games. Because everyone loves to complain about everything, NBC is biennially ripped for tape delay and sappy features and U.S.-centric coverage. Few ever consider that the alternatives to each are either impossible or untenable. (Americans want to watch Americans. What's wrong with that?)
You need the puff pieces of the skeleton racer with two children. Otherwise, why would you be emotionally invested in watching her race? The stars at the Olympics - the LeBrons and Bolts and Phelpses - are the exceptions. Viewers usually have three hours to get to know an athlete's life story, then watch them compete on the world's biggest stage.
It's the same way Kentucky Derby coverage has little to do with horse racing and the Academy Awards telecast doesn't have much relevance to the art of filmmaking. NBC has to cast a wide net with Olympic coverage and it does so with aplomb. The Games are as much a human interest story as a sporting event.
2. Some, not all, tape delay is a necessary evil.
Gone are the days of waiting all day to see races that took place 12 hours earlier. NBC streamed every event live from Sochi and, in a big change, carried figure skating in its entirety on NBCSN. Even with the progress, we're never fully getting rid of tape delay.
None of the Olympic sites past 2020 have been selected yet, but history suggests there will be one or two in the Americas and the rest on different continents in hard-to-mange time zones. For those, NBC has to show tape delayed sports at night or there's nothing to show in primetime. For the Games that take place in this hemisphere (such as Rio in 2016), the marquee events will be beamed live to the East. The $7.65 billion question is whether the West Coast will have to watch on a three-hour delay, like during Beijing and Vancouver.
Bob Costas is a young-looking 62, but he's not going to be on television forever. His replacement hosts in Sochi - Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira - aren't much younger. NBC has been acquiring sports and entertainment talent over the past few months (including poaching Josh Elliott from Good Morning America), to add to the stable of talent already at the network. Over the next few years, NBC will need to determine who will usher the network into a new generation of Olympic coverage.
4. We have no idea what the future of coverage looks like.
It's 18 years until the 2032 Summer Olympics. Go back 18 years and it's 1996. The Internet was in its infancy. Streaming video was unheard of. Google, Twitter and Facebook didn't exist. Who could have imagined watching live events on your phone? Or catching highlights in tweets? Or watching on five different cable stations? No one knows how we'll be watching the Olympics in 2032.
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