Even though the local station CITN/Cayman27 were showing the Olympic Games via ESPN with focus on Caribbean athletes breaks, one of our media outlets plugged the NBC feed. There was no mention of any of the other feeds that included CBC (Canada). All available here on local cable. I found the NBC only plug very strange.

This was especially so as NBC chose to tape the Opening ceremony with a one hour delay whilst the other feeds were live.

And what about the NBC coverage as the week progressed?

It was horrible.

Not only do we not see hardly anyone else except the Americans but we have to endure video tapes of their parents, their school friends, their babies, their walking down the aisle of a supermarket, their school photos, getting breakfast for their kids/husband, and driving a car and going into a theatre.

Can you believe this? I am not exaggerating.

Even CBC’s coverage that was much better, had to break away to show us live one of their reporters, an ex Olympian, walking up a staircase, going through a door, then a passage, through another door, into another passage where we had a close up of a camera on a tripod against a wall not being used. Then into the studio where the retired Olympian was hugged by the host interviewer. Thankfully, we went back to the Olympics.

Back to NBC where we had a medal ceremony, except we only saw one participant, even though there was a silver and a bronze awardee. The only one we saw or mentioned was, yes, an American swimmer. Whilst the bronze and silver medals were being presented we had a close up of the American’s face with the camera trying to see inside her nose!

I am not alone in complaining about this. Headlines are all over the Internet from media sites saying NBC’s coverage is the worst ever.

On the website Alaska Dispatch News the author of an article there was actually trying to be nice and gave the reasons for the mentality behind the coverage. It did not, however, stop the headline that read, “NBC’s packaged coverage of Olympics is not a gift for viewers – and it insults the athletes”.

Author Sally Jenkins writes:
As a woman, I’m not really into results; I’m more about the journey ….. So you can blame me for hijacking your viewing experience.

Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:

“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he explained recently to Philly.com. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”

NBC has been advancing this paperback romance novel approach for many years now, tape-delaying and heavily packaging the Olympics with soft-focus stories, often very successfully. To be fair, there are some very nice, smart execs at the network, and it’s not inherently sexist for them to say that women have some different viewing habits and interests than men. Women behave very differently as consumers: They read more than men, for example, and are more likely to buy fiction.

But the overnight rating for NBC’s hour-delayed telecast of the Opening Ceremonies in Rio was a 16.5, the lowest for a Summer Games since 1992. The reasons for this aren’t entirely clear yet, but it’s a good guess that the network patronized and frustrated a huge segment of its audience, men and women alike, and that begs for closer examination.

If we’re lucky, the Rio Games finally will persuade NBC execs their Harlequin strategy is outdated. One major problem with the NBC approach is that it’s based on viewer “studies,” and it’s more than a little self-selecting: If you produce a variety show, you’re going to attract variety show viewers. If you produce a sports telecast, you’ll attract sports viewers.

This is where NBC’s real offense lies. It’s not so much that it insults the audience – but it sure does insult Olympic athletes, especially female athletes. The Olympics is the most prominent competition in the world and 53 percent of Team USA is female, which means American women likely will bring in more medals than American men. Yet they will be presented in packaging aimed at a Ladies’ Home Journal crowd. Exactly how does that grow a hardcore audience for women’s sports, or a year-in, year-out base for other Olympic sports, for that matter?

NBC doesn’t necessarily have a social responsibility to cover female Olympians as the real athletes they are. But there’s no question the current setup treats them as diminutives, even while celebrating their “stories.” And this may very well turn off traditional sports viewers.

Even if you buy NBC’s argument that the majority of the viewing public prefers edited, packaged programming over the vagaries of live sports competition, then ask yourself this question: Why aren’t NFL football telecasts tape delayed and packaged? Why don’t the networks delay and collapse the games in favor of sugary features showing childhood films of the Manning brothers on a swing set instead of wasting viewers’ time with a penalty-filled second quarter?

NBC is living in the past with its heavy packaging and commercial interruptions. Viewer patience is short, and the more passionate sports audiences who want the women’s soccer or cycling or gymnastics have live-streaming options that don’t require headachy authentication. Less devoted viewers have a world of alternate uninterrupted entertainment at their disposal: social gaming, YouTube, Vevo, movie websites.

To view the whole article go to: http://www.adn.com/opinions/national-opinions/2016/08/06/nbcs-packaged-coverage-not-a-gift-for-viewers/

I was simulcasting all three ESPN-Cayman27/CBC and NBC feeds and CBC is at the moment my winner. The main problem I have with the ESPN is the studio breaks to talk about the Caribbean athletes just seemed to be amateur. The production and the interview hosts were sub par against even the NBC broadcast. That was a shame. I found them also dull and therefore un-interesting.

Hopefully things will get better.

Thankfully we didn’t see an American athlete changing a baby’s diaper! That might still happen,

See also iNews Cayman stories published today: “When an athlete’s relationships are more important than success in her sport” and “The most sexist moments at the Olympics — so far”