NYT: ESPN Thinks “Nonlive” Olympics Aren’t Fan-Friendly

And now for our daily dose of anger toward NBC for a lack of live Olympics coverage. No, this isn’t a rant on how the network finally put hockey on NBC, only to show it on tape delay to the West Coast in lieu of what was presumably airings of Deal or No Deal, Days of Our Lives and Ellen. Nope, this time we actually have some meat to go inside this hate sandwich.↵↵Richard Sandomir gets the nod for the story under this New York Times headline: ESPN Sets Sights on Different Way to Show Olympics.↵

↵↵If ESPN wins the bid for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics, they plan to do everything live and not hold all the good events for prime time. And with that, we can all feel justified in our hatred of taped sports.↵

↵↵⇥“I don’t think nonlive is sports fan-friendly,” said John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content. “It’s hard for me to imagine, in our culture, not showing events live.”↵↵Sandomir also spoke with several NBC executives, including Gary Zenkel, the President of NBC Olympics, who said:↵↵⇥“A tremendous amount of time and experience goes into how we plan the Olympics,” Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics, said Wednesday from Vancouver. “Quite frankly, we’re pleased with the results.↵⇥↵⇥“It’s very challenging to capture the American audience for 17 days,” Zenkel said, “and many of us have been doing this since 1992, some since 1988.”↵⇥

↵↵Oh, man. Skipper just went all, “if he were my boyfriend, I wouldn’t disrespect him like that. I’d treat my man right.” And then NBC went all, “oh, you think you know more about my man than I do? That’s easy for you to say considering you don’t even have a boyfriend. I’ve been doing right by my man for more than 20 years.”↵

↵↵What I do know is that this all comes down to money, and while NBC claims that the old “put it in prime time and families will sit down together to watch” model has worked for them – to the tune of 25 million prime time viewers through 12 days of coverage – ESPN can fall back on the point that NBC expects to lose more than $200 million dollars on the Vancouver Games. ESPN thinks that the future is a far more on-demand – as in “we demand on being shown live sports” – world than NBC does.↵

↵↵Obviously the American sports fan agrees with ESPN, and obviously Skipper knows that putting these comments out for public consumption during the Olympics just fuels our anger toward NBC. But all this is talk, and all the IOC cares about – not tape delay or on demand or anything – is how much one of these companies plans to pay for the rights. ESPN already took on the BCS and is rumored to be very interested in the NCAA Tournament. What’s another few billion to have the Olympics as well? Our early afternoon and/or late-night Olympic viewing habits demand it.↵

↵