Olympics Broadcasting Thread

[Jess 1110]

So, the Olympics are once again here. Every two years, the world comes together to share in the comraderie and competition of the Olympics. Every two years, America hopes with all of their hearts... that someday the olympic rights get bought by ESPN.

 

Yep, this thread is the one where you can bitch about NBC.

 

But I also wanted to make this so we could all share what our local NBC stations are doing - what are they doing for the Games, if they're running an image promo, what have you. Not set changes or anything, though; we've already covered these in multiple threads.

 

And, yes, there are other broadcasters than NBC. I'm using the Dark Arts of the Internet to get the BBC going. Let's just say they're kicking NBC's ass, coverage-wise.

 

So, yeah, post in this thread your olympic thoughts.

[ProButtonPusher 230]

IN B4 an extremely detailed and emotional post about how someone would run the Olympics games and their NBC affiliate ("First, guys, it would become an NBC O&O, [NBC ArtWorks] Look F...")

 

Happy Olympics, everyone!

[ABC 7 Denver 1562]

HulkieD, just buy a Ku-Band sat and aim it at 55.5°W Intelsat 805 C. Bam! You have 9 live feeds of BBC. And that is just to whet your whistle.

 

Aim a Ku-Band to 72°W AMC 6 Ku and see four NBC back-haul feeds(unaired Olympics anyone?).

 

Aim a Sat Dish to 103°W AMC 1 Ku and pick-up the unbridled NBC|HD feeds East, Central, Mountain, West, and the NBC News Channel. Hint: Very few, if any commercials.

 

I don't own a Ku-Band dish, but I plan on buying one. What I say about commercials is based purely on speculation. Cheers!

[skbl17 188]

To be fair, I'm not going to bitch about NBC; I think Twitter's taken care of that. In fact, there was even speculation that Twitter was censoring trending tags such as #nbcsucks and #nbcfail to please NBC. All the commercials are annoying though, plus most of the events (on TV) aren't even live, Internet streams notwithstanding. BTW, every NBC affiliate has an "Olympic Zone" website. Even the tiny ones, like WNBW. It has pretty generic stuff, to be honest. Very little locally-oriented content on those sites.

 

Time for some speculation! Who should get the games?:

 

ESPN/ABC (Disney-ABC Television Group): These two broadcasters alone have an extensive broadcasting footprint, from the ESPN family (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes, ESPN 3D, etc.) to ABC/ABC Family and all of its internet properties. That's already the potential for 8-9 feeds on TV, with more online via ESPN3. Plus, at least on the ESPN networks and ABC Family, I don't think primetime is as important as on broadcast networks, so why tape-delay the ceremonies for ad revenue instead of airing it live or at least airing it twice during the day, with less commercials?

 

CBS: CBS has hosted the Olympics before. They are experienced with the games and have done so recently (the last time they aired the Olympics was in 1998,) although I could see the same problems happening here as with NBC (tape-delay of events/ceremonies for ad revenue, etc.)

 

FOX: FOX has done well in the past in ad revenue and earning an audience with large sporting events, plus, maybe, FOX can do with FOX News what NBC has done with MSNBC. :rofl!: FOX has FOX, FOX Soccer, FOX News, FOX Business, SPEED, all of the regional FSN networks, Fuel and FOX Deportes. As with other commercial networks, though, there would be a drive to schedule Olympic events in order to earn maximum advertising revenue and the largest possible audience.

 

PBS: My main argument for PBS is the fact that it is much, much less commercially-based than NBC, FOX, ESPN/ABC and CBS; and it has a developing, if a bit small, broadcasting footprint. There's PBS, PBS World and Create. The only problems I see with PBS is the fact that it's not so much a network, as it is a group of smaller public regional broadcasters. Plus, PBS World and Create would have significant hurdles to jump, as they're mainly regulated to subchannels on PBS stations. Thus, if the IOC was to give the license to PBS, it would probably have to be in coalition with commercial networks like ESPN, FOX or CBS (as they've done with the FIFA World Cup in the past).

 

But forget all that, it's just speculation! It's only my opinion.

 

IN B4 an extremely detailed and emotional post about how someone would run the Olympics games and their NBC affiliate ("First, guys, it would become an NBC O&O, [NBC ArtWorks] Look F...")

 

Happy Olympics, everyone!

 

I think that's best left in the realms of fantasy television websites. One can dream, though.

 

To be fair, I haven't seen much of WXIA's coverage of the Olympics yet.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

If I may add something, which has nothing to do about bitching about NBC airing the Games on tape delay, I would add that people should not bitch out to NBC about them airing on tape delay, in fact they should be grateful. Because if (since London is in different country [and time zone]) and when the Games ARE live, most viewers would probably be asleep to watch them anyway. Then they would bitch to NBC for something else.

 

Speaking on the cable networks, people are bitching on that too. Saying that its a dumb idea that they would air some games across the networks. Since some have wished for ESPN to have broadcast rights, there is one little thing they they have not thought about. ESPN IS ALSO A CABLE NETWORK! And since some said they don't have cable, they would not watch. So basically they ate wasting their time about this.

Oh and NBC had not stressed this enough: its live online.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

Sorry if I'm against the bitching.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

BTW Hulkie, cab you get video on BBC's coverage.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

I'm curious on what it looks like.

[skbl17 188]

If I may add something, which has nothing to do about bitching about NBC airing the Games on tape delay, I would add that people should not bitch out to NBC about them airing on tape delay, in fact they should be grateful. Because if (since London is in different country [and time zone]) and when the Games ARE live, most viewers would probably be asleep to watch them anyway. Then they would bitch to NBC for something else.

 

Speaking on the cable networks, people are bitching on that too. Saying that its a dumb idea that they would air some games across the networks. Since some have wished for ESPN to have broadcast rights, there is one little thing they they have not thought about. ESPN IS ALSO A CABLE NETWORK! And since some said they don't have cable, they would not watch. So basically they ate wasting their time about this.

Oh and NBC had not stressed this enough: its live online.

 

True, but, of course, there would be diehard Olympic fans who would literally wakeup at, say, 4AM just to watch the ceremonies live. In fact, some in Seattle decided to wakeup at 5AM Friday morning just to watch the opening ceremony live on CBC instead of waiting for 7:30PM local time.

 

I would be in favor of the two-broadcast model, though. Air the ceremonies live in the morning/at 2AM/at midday on a cable property or the Internet for those who absolutely cannot live to see a tape-delayed broadcast or are too lazy to stream broadcasters like the BBC, then air it again in primetime on the actual network to get the ad revenue. By the way, it's okay to be against the bitching, people can be immature sometimes.

 

Plus, ESPN shares sporting events with ABC, too, since it doesn't have a sporting department. (ESPN on ABC?)

[devswartz 2]

Well, NBC's strategy is working. Ratings already are up 6 percent over Beijing even with the real-time, online buzz. That tells me more people are choosing to watch the dramatic results on tape delay than boycott/get mad at NBC for not showing it live.

 

So all that online coverage that was supposed to embarrass NBC? Yeah, it's boosted their ratings at absolutely NO cost to them.

 

Speaking of economics, when you sell about $1 billion in ad revenue and are still millions in the hole, it has to be devastating. Thus, I think ESPN won't push very hard for the Olympics until they can find a way to consistently break even or make a profit. So it'll be a while.

[Weeters 1812]

HulkieD, just buy a Ku-Band sat and aim it at 55.5°W Intelsat 805 C. Bam! You have 9 live feeds of BBC. And that is just to whet your whistle.

 

Aim a Ku-Band to 72°W AMC 6 Ku and see four NBC back-haul feeds(unaired Olympics anyone?).

 

Aim a Sat Dish to 103°W AMC 1 Ku and pick-up the unbridled NBC|HD feeds East, Central, Mountain, West, and the NBC News Channel. Hint: Very few, if any commercials.

 

I don't own a Ku-Band dish, but I plan on buying one. What I say about commercials is based purely on speculation. Cheers!

 

I have seen the raw NBC feed without commercials. You eventually want them back. The looping peacock animation gets boring real fast.

[T.L. Hughes 760]

If I may add something, which has nothing to do about bitching about NBC airing the Games on tape delay, I would add that people should not bitch out to NBC about them airing on tape delay, in fact they should be grateful. Because if (since London is in different country [and time zone]) and when the Games ARE live, most viewers would probably be asleep to watch them anyway. Then they would bitch to NBC for something else.

 

Another reason why it makes no sense to complain about NBC running Olympic coverage on tape delay: NBC couldn't air all the Olympic events live if it wanted to. Besides the scheduling issues due to the time difference between the U.S. and London, it has to allocate enough breakaway time from the Olympics to its affiliates for them to run weekday morning and nightly evening newscasts at regular airtimes (except on the few NBC stations without news like WTWC/Tallahassee) and what little syndicated programming they can air (which can air during the late afternoon and/or early morning hours, depending on the time zone location of the affiliate and how much news programming it runs on evenings). That comes out to about 5 1/2 hours that NBC's affiliates get to themselves during the games. NBC also has to allocate 3 1/2 hours of time to run NBC Nightly News and Today, the only regular network programs that it doesn't preempt for the Olympics. Most stations had to put their midday newscasts on sabbatical because of the Olympics, if all the events were aired live (and apparently only events airing during the daytime hours are aired live by NBC to some extent), weekday morning newscasts would have to be preempted as well given that the events begin at midday in London when it is just before sunrise in any of the U.S. time zones. It would be easy to run the Olympic events live if it were held in a U.S., Canadian, Mexican or South American city since the time difference is far less significant, but since the Olympics are held in various locales depending on who is selected to hold the games in a given year, this isn't always possible.

 

The same situation NBC has with the tape delay would likely happen anyway if the Olympics aired on ABC (through ESPN) or CBS. It might be less of a factor for Fox since there are no national news programs on the network (other than Fox News Sunday) to work around and the fact that there are significantly fewer in-house news departments among its affiliates compared to NBC, ABC and CBS (although it might be enough of one since most of Fox's stations do air newscasts, whether in-house or outsourced to another station); though the vast majority of syndicated shows would be preempted on their affiliates.

[bhratbrat 423]

I do agree with the poster above. Also if you think that its bad that the Olympics are being time delayed this year in London, just wait till the winter olympics in Russia next in 2014 with nearly double the time difference from Sochi to the East Coast of the US. 2016's olympics will be the first summer games that shouldn't be time delayed since the 1996 games. So I for one am appreciative of the time delay to actually be awake and watch the games.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

 

 

True, but, of course, there would be diehard Olympic fans who would literally wakeup at, say, 4AM just to watch the ceremonies live. In fact, some in Seattle decided to wakeup at 5AM Friday morning just to watch the opening ceremony live on CBC instead of waiting for 7:30PM local time.

 

I would be in favor of the two-broadcast model, though. Air the ceremonies live in the morning/at 2AM/at midday on a cable property or the Internet for those who absolutely cannot live to see a tape-delayed broadcast or are too lazy to stream broadcasters like the BBC, then air it again in primetime on the actual network to get the ad revenue. By the way, it's okay to be against the bitching, people can be immature sometimes.

 

Plus, ESPN shares sporting events with ABC, too, since it doesn't have a sporting department. (ESPN on ABC?)

You are certainly right. I didn't think of the diehard fans. I guess I'm sure now that those who criticize NBC had a few good reasons and it is I who wasted my time. And I almost forgot about ABC sharing coverage with ESPN.

[Action Newsroom 1151]

 

 

Another reason why it makes no sense to complain about NBC running Olympic coverage on tape delay: NBC couldn't air all the Olympic events live if it wanted to. Besides the scheduling issues due to the time difference between the U.S. and London, it has to allocate enough breakaway time from the Olympics to its affiliates for them to run weekday morning and nightly evening newscasts at regular airtimes (except on the few NBC stations without news like WTWC/Tallahassee) and what little syndicated programming they can air (which can air during the late afternoon and/or early morning hours, depending on the time zone location of the affiliate and how much news programming it runs on evenings). That comes out to about 5 1/2 hours that NBC's affiliates get to themselves during the games. NBC also has to allocate 3 1/2 hours of time to run NBC Nightly News and Today, the only regular network programs that it doesn't preempt for the Olympics. Most stations had to put their midday newscasts on sabbatical because of the Olympics, if all the events were aired live (and apparently only events airing during the daytime hours are aired live by NBC to some extent), weekday morning newscasts would have to be preempted as well given that the events begin at midday in London when it is just before sunrise in any of the U.S. time zones. It would be easy to run the Olympic events live if it were held in a U.S., Canadian, Mexican or South American city since the time difference is far less significant, but since the Olympics are held in various locales depending on who is selected to hold the games in a given year, this isn't always possible.

 

The same situation NBC has with the tape delay would likely happen anyway if the Olympics aired on ABC (through ESPN) or CBS. It might be less of a factor for Fox since there are no national news programs on the network (other than Fox News Sunday) to work around and the fact that there are significantly fewer in-house news departments among its affiliates compared to NBC, ABC and CBS (although it might be enough of one since most of Fox's stations do air newscasts, whether in-house or outsourced to another station); though the vast majority of syndicated shows would be preempted on their affiliates.

Thank you. Someone else understands. Its not that I hate NBC tape-delaying the Games; it's the constant complaining that we get every single Freaking day. It's insanity!

[MidwestTV 1174]

You know I honestly doubt that any other network could pull off the coverage as nice well as NBC, especially ABC. For some reason I see, feel and think as if that if they ever got them, it would be a total disaster.

 

CBS would become even more arrogant in their coverage and would air promos about how their number one in everything (except for news of course) and include the Olympics in those promotions even YEARS after the last Olympics went down.

 

Fox....eh...I honestly don't know.

 

But PBS though? ha!

[Jess 1110]

I know why NBC delays to primetime. I think the amount of money paid to the IOC justifies that. I realize the considerations with affiliates, etc. And, more than that, I know this is a topic that gets beaten to death every single time the Olympics air in America. But #nbcfail has been one of the top trends on twitter for a reason.

 

That said, I realize the current formula is working. It has to if the ratings are this good. Awful Announcing brings up a good point - the primetime telecasts aren't geared directly to sports fans, but to more casual people who are interested in the human interest parts. That's why you have Matt and Meredith doing the Opening Ceremonies. That's why they hired Ryan Seacrest. I would keep that format exactly the same.

 

But I don't think primetime should come at the expense of the rest of the coverage. We live in the Twitter age now. News disseminates more or less in real time now. When the Phelps-Lochte thing happened, not only did my twitter fill up, I got five alerts from various sources - including some from NBC sources. I doubt people went into primetime not knowing the results. If anything, it might have built up buzz and helped.

 

I don't think you tinker with the primetime formula too much - but there has to be a live option in addition to the existing coverage.

 

Yeah, I know they're streaming - unfortunately, their streams are inferior to what's being shown on television. The streams don't use the NBC announcers; many, in fact, don't use announcers at all. Most of these sports are unfamiliar to these shores, so commentary is practically a requirement. Add to that, their streams are incredibly flaky and hard to access, especially on mobile, and require cable authentication. And some people just plain prefer watching it on TV.

 

I had a long, passionate response explaining my position, but Awful Announcing posted a better one. You should read it, but I'll post pertinent parts and add my thoughts.

The primetime broadcast isn't aimed at the 25 year old blogger or tweeter. The primetime broadcast is aimed at the 45-55 year old couple who find Jordyn Wieber crying on air to be a captivating human interest story.

 

That's simply the truth. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but NBC's tape delay strategy is working. The Opening Ceremonies was the biggest on record with 40.7 million people. (Why everyone was so upset about watching what amounts to the world's largest variety show on tape delay still escapes me.) Day 1 primetime ratings were up 14% from Beijing and the most watched ever. Day 2 primetime ratings were up 2% over Beijing and the best of a non-US Olympics.

 

But, that doesn't mean NBC's tape delay strategy is all poppies and sunshine. Of course the tape delay strategy is out-of-date and a relic of the past in a social media age. Of course it's frustrating. While we of the social media crazy crowd certainly aren't the majority, we're a growing sect of the population. As Richard Sandomir pointed out, the #NBCFail meme actually means something this year. The @NBCDelayed Twitter feed has 5 figure followers as a parody account. The cries against tape delay are louder and more numerous than ever before. To expect a large chunk of Olympic viewers to stay off the internet, smart phones, Twitter, and Facebook from 11:30 AM ET till primetime so as to not spoil the men's gymnastics team final is unrealistic.

Basically what I outlined above, but just go on twitter. This isn't just a few people - NBC has been regularly been one of the top trends since the olympics began, and not in a good way. #nbcfail is more entertaining than the olympics themselves.

 

I'd also add to that the fact that NBC and their stations pretend that they're happening in primetime. They are not doing a very good job of it. @NBCPhiladelphia has been live-tweeting every five seconds, pretending the primetime events are live. (Ooh! Synchronized Diving! Who's gonna win?!) At the same time, they have sent out spoilers. NBC News even had Phelps-Lochte as their top story, no spoiler alert beforehand. Pretending it's live, I think, assumes the viewers are dumb, which they're not.

 

There's a solution to this - actually, there's an easy, workable solution to these problems that would make everyone happy.

 

So what's the solution? There's a sensible answer that could serve everyone. Air the premier live events on your cable sports network trying to get off the ground. NBC Sports Network has been labelled the home of Team USA these Olympics' date=' but why not make it the home of all the live events we have to see? The actual amount of events worth complaining about in tape delay is actually relatively small - swimming, gymnastics, track, and maybe a few others. Air those live on NBC Sports Network and direct anyone who wants to see major live events there. Carry on with the tape delay primetime television miniseries event of the summer, but provide us with a viable live viewing option. Sure, there are other issues like risking available highlights once an event is aired on television, but there's already so much information out there when events happen live there are hardly any more excuses in that department. If Brian Williams is spoiling events on the NBC Nightly News, then it's well past time we pretended these events are happening in a vacuum. Give NBC Sports Network a huge boost and protect primetime for those people that are only watching in primetime anyways.

He is absolutely right on this.

 

When they did the revamp, I thought they were going this route with NBCSN's Olympics coverage. Turns out, all they did was take the coverage they were already doing on USA - all the team sports - and moved it to NBCSN. IMO, that's wasting the channel's potential. You can put the live events on NBCSN and have that channel's coverage adopt a different, more sports-oriented tone. Advertise it, but don't go too heavy on the promotion so as not to piss off the affiliates. In addition, the online component should be more robust, the live streams should be using announcers regardless of whether they will air on TV or not. (If you have to, make deals with the other broadcasters.) I realize the risk to NBC's strategy here, but this seems win-win. You give your fledgling sports network a big boost while still having the primetime component.

 

I don't think the tape delay is the only problem for NBC.

 

You know I honestly doubt that any other network could pull off the coverage as nice well as NBC, especially ABC. For some reason I see, feel and think as if that if they ever got them, it would be a total disaster.

NBC's Olympic coverage has been hit or miss for years. The criticism is not new, and they've made some pretty big missteps with some of their coverage. Vancouver 2010 was probably worse than this - those living in the pacific time zone, when the events are happening, had to watch on tape delay. Reactions to every Olympics they've done has been mixed in some way.

 

I was not old enough to remember ABC's olympic coverage, but I've heard it's been far superior to the NBC coverage. Some clips exist online of the Calgary 88 opening ceremony, though. Jim McKay was lead host. Color commentator was Peter Jennings. You cannot tell me that Matt and Meredith would be better than those two. Particularly Jennings, who was a walking encyclopedia on world affairs and probably had killer analysis of the Parade of Nations.

 

Besides, it wouldn't be ABC getting Olympics coverage - it'd be ESPN. ABC'd air coverage, yes, but ESPN would carry the bulk of it. And honestly? If it's anything like their stellar coverage of the World Cup, it would be tremendous. There's a lot about ESPN that rubs me the wrong way, but if they can produce a respectful, well-produced and well-thought World Cup, they can do the same for the Olympics. (Hint: Get Bob Ley to host.)

 

Okay, done with that, but I'm following up with a question that I wanted to answer about the Olympics coverage...

[jrh1985 56]

I've been into the Games ever since 2000, didn't watch before that but knew about the Games.

I love NBC's Coverage. I really like the special introductions NBC has to their Prime Time Coverage most nights. did other stations used to do that???

 

Come to think of it, NBC had no special open to the opening cermony to the '92 summer games. They just opened with the cermony coutdown, was it because it was live?

[fl19ga114sc105 3]

The question is when people remeber back to why they like the Olympic coverage so much when it was on ABC was it becuase of the presentation, or was it becuase of Howard Cosell who pretty much was ABC Sports.

[Samantha 2878]

They do have announcers on the live streams — the ones provided by OBS (the Olympic Broadcasting Service, which does what it says on the tin). I have watched several events (swimming, gymnastics) through the live stream.

[MidwestTV 1174]

Doesn't NBC have the Olympics through 2020 or 2022 or something like that? At the least?

[T.L. Hughes 760]

Apparently, getting zealous about your complaints about the Olympics can also get you in a little trouble. I stumbled upon this story from KTLA:

Twitter Suspends L.A. Reporter After NBC Olympics Tweet

 

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- The Twitter account of a Los Angeles journalist was suspended after he tweeted the email address of NBC's Olympics president.

 

Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for the London-based daily British The Independent, had been critical of NBC after it chose not to air the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics live.

 

He then encouraged his followers to email NBC's Olympics President Gary Zenkel and posted Zenkel's email address.

 

Twitter responded by shutting down Adams' account, saying that he violated their privacy policy.

 

The company states online: "Posting another person's private and confidential information is a violation of the Twitter Rules."

 

Twitter lists a couple of examples of private information, including: credit card information; social security or other national identity numbers; addresses or locations that are considered and treated as private; non-public, personal phone numbers; and non-public, personal email addresses.

 

In another page, Twitter says "If the account is violating our policy, then you can file a report and we will investigate the account. If the account is in violation, we will suspend the account."

 

NBC confirmed that it had filed a complaint with Twitter.

 

As part of his suspension, Adams' account and his tweets were rendered invisible.

 

But in an ironic twist, the incident became Twitter fodder on Monday, and "Guy Adams" was a worldwide trending topic.

 

There's been debate over whether corporate or professional emails are really private.

 

Deadspin, which has been reporting the story, says the emails of NBC executives are easy to determine since they're all a basic "[email protected]" format.

 

For his part, Adams has called Twitter's decision to shut down his account "somewhat sinister."

 

It's "quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journalists who are critical of their Olympic coverage," Adams wrote to Twitter, according to a piece put online by the Independent on Monday.

 

Twitter, which entered a strategic, non-financial partnership with NBC to manage content during the Olympics, has not commented.

[WXmanTim 88]

Even if/when the games are in a time zone native to the Americas, some high-profile events are going to be tape delayed...it's the nature of the commercially-driven broadcast.

 

I recall that NBC was hounded mercilessly for holding Keri Struggs (sp?) Gold medal performance at the 1996 Atlanta Games until primetime because the results were leaked hours before the broadcast, and that was in the infancy of the internet. The IOC schedules the times of the events and its not always going to coincide with a certain broadcaster's schedule.

 

Hard core olympics fans are just going to have to deal with it...or find a way to watch everything live.

[ED2 144]

Just sharing what Canadian viewers are seeing in terms of Olympic coverage...

 

The "Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium" (Bell Media/CTV, Rogers Media, and other smaller broadcasters) are responsible for broadcasting the games in Canada.

 

The CTV network has pre-empted its entire programming schedule on all its 15 owned and operated local stations to show Olympic events live from the wee early hours until around 6pm ET. The pre-emptions affect the network's national morning show (Canada AM), the local morning shows on CTV's Western Canadian stations (CTV Morning Live), and the local noon newscasts. Primetime has also been pre-empted to show tape-delayed events and packages from 7pm-11pm, similar to what NBC is doing. There is also overnight taped and live Olympic events on the network. CTV National News at 11pm, along with the local CTV News at 6pm and 11:30pm (local time) are still airing as scheduled.

 

The V Network is a French-language over-the-air network that broadcasts mainly in the province of Quebec, and the City of Ottawa. They have also pre-empted most of their programming however their coverage is being put together by RDS (the french version of TSN). No newscasts have been pre-empted, due to the fact V doesn't air newscasts.

 

TSN (Bell Media/CTV, our version of ESPN) is also providing live Olympics coverage from the early hours until 6pm ET, and providing tape-delayed events and packages in primetime similar to CTV. However, if TSN has to air other sports in the evening, the primetime package is shuttled over to TSN 2. RDS is also providing wall-to-wall live Olympic coverage, similar to TSN, and separate from V.

 

Sportsnet (Rogers Media) is doing the same thing as TSN. OLN (Bell Media) is also airing some live events, along with an Olympics package in the evening.

 

Omni Television is Rogers Media's over-the-air multicultural television network, with stations within large metropolitan areas. They also air some live Olympic events using their in-house non-English on-air staff (eg. soccer matches in Portuguese, Badminton in Cantonese). However they have not pre-empted their normal programming to the same extent as CTV.

 

There is also the Asian Television Network - a collection of cable channels that air programming aimed at Canada's South Asian audience. They are also airing live events in whatever language they broadcast in, such as Punjabi.

 

And on top of the live TV coverage we have access to, the consortium's website (ctvolympics.ca) live streams probably every single Olympic event that's being televised, including the live shows on CTV, TSN, and Sportsnet. The streams are also available on the CTVOlympics app.

 

In addition, we also get NBC on cable (KING, KHQ, KARE, WDIV, WGRZ, WPTZ, WHDH - stations vary depending on the cable/satellite provider).

 

So if you subscribe to the right packages on cable or satellite, you have plenty of Olympic programming to choose from. If you are watching on antenna, however, you only have CTV and in some places Omni.

 

NBC's coverage of the Olympics are also affecting other Canadian networks ability to sim-sub, mainly Global and Citytv. They've had to find alternate programming or air reruns in lieu of NBC pre-empting their programming

[Viper550 268]

Actually OLN is owned by Rogers. It's well, now separate from what was NBC Sports Network (they didn't make it Versus since Rogers already has Sportsnet as their main sports channel), and is being bombarded by Storage Wars re-runs.

 

Oh yeah, CTV/Rogers' coverage is actually being framed for 16:9, Fox Sports-style. That's a relief (now if only OBS could get the memo too)