Top secret
February 14, 2010 6:42 PM Subscribe
Another Olympic-themed question: is the Men's Downhill event going to be televised live?
If not, why not? And why is it always so difficult to find this kind of stuff out?
If not, why not? And why is it always so difficult to find this kind of stuff out?
In the US? Probably not: it's the kind of event that NBC may want to dribble through primetime, depending what else it has lined up, and it may even embargo its ringfenced live streams.
Why not? For the same reason most Americans didn't get to see Usain Bolt leave the crowd gasping in Beijing: NBC regards the Olympics as a ratings machine, and doesn't respect the concept of showing non-primetime "minority" events live, even though it's first nature to other countries' broadcasters, regardless of the local time. Why is it difficult? For the same reason that your local news never tells you when they'll show the weather forecast. They want you to sit through five soft-focus profiles, an hour of figure skating and half an hour of snowboarders doing tricks first.
All that said: the earlier postponement and weather conditions mean the timing of the race depends on the course officials in Whistler. The race itself is set to go off at 10am PST, and if you look on the internets, you may find something, though unofficial Olympic streams get shut down pretty quickly. And the NBC site does offer email/text alerts for those events.
posted by holgate at 7:11 PM on February 14, 2010
Why not? For the same reason most Americans didn't get to see Usain Bolt leave the crowd gasping in Beijing: NBC regards the Olympics as a ratings machine, and doesn't respect the concept of showing non-primetime "minority" events live, even though it's first nature to other countries' broadcasters, regardless of the local time. Why is it difficult? For the same reason that your local news never tells you when they'll show the weather forecast. They want you to sit through five soft-focus profiles, an hour of figure skating and half an hour of snowboarders doing tricks first.
All that said: the earlier postponement and weather conditions mean the timing of the race depends on the course officials in Whistler. The race itself is set to go off at 10am PST, and if you look on the internets, you may find something, though unofficial Olympic streams get shut down pretty quickly. And the NBC site does offer email/text alerts for those events.
posted by holgate at 7:11 PM on February 14, 2010
If you're asking for NBC, it seems no. Their website shows it being during the primetime show. Here's a press release from yesterday. And NBC does not show events live that will be replayed during primetime. Make sure to stay away from sports sites, maybe even NBC's site as past Olympics have shown. Yes, it sucks.
posted by ALongDecember at 7:56 PM on February 14, 2010
posted by ALongDecember at 7:56 PM on February 14, 2010
Response by poster: Yeah, I figured as much. I tried looking before on the website but when I went to the schedule "by sport" and entered "alpine skiing" all it gave me was a primetime replay from midnight to four this morning, I thought because of the postponements it might not show up there. Stupid piece of junk. It looks like they'll be showing the second part of Today and Rachel Ray instead.
posted by Red Loop at 2:59 AM on February 15, 2010
posted by Red Loop at 2:59 AM on February 15, 2010
NBC doesn't have anything like saturation coverage of these Olympics, probably because the winter ones just aren't as popular. Their weekday coverage seems to be limited to one two-hour afternoon block on NBC and quite a lot of live curling and ice hockey on USA and CNBC.
posted by smackfu at 6:28 AM on February 15, 2010
posted by smackfu at 6:28 AM on February 15, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
I'd guess that with so many events going on at the same time many networks like to keep their options open as to which ones they will broadcast.
posted by Balonious Assault at 6:56 PM on February 14, 2010