The Olympics didn’t stumble because of Millennials, but because of NBC | Hacker News Reader

The Olympics didn’t stumble because of Millennials, but because of NBC

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29 pointsjwebb9912 comments

The article makes a good point that cable-cutters have to do some extra work. Another separate issue is that MSNBC's (or the General Electric News Network, as I call them) really did a poor job on the coverage. I thought that a few of the announcers were consciously dissing on non-USA athletes. Isn't the Olympics supposed to be about good will and respect for athletes from around the world?

Another issue was in the choice of which events to cover. MSNBC would sometimes play USA athletes' performances over and over. Once would usually be enough, to make time for showing more sports venues.

This isn't just my opinion. Literally everyone I have talked to about the Olympic coverage did not like MSNBC's coverage.

Good will? That's why they have competitions based on country to beat each other with elevated podiums displaying they are better than the rest (gold, silver, bronze)? The good will is allowing every country to compete, the competition itself is not for goodwill.

> That's why they have competitions based on country to beat each other with elevated podiums displaying they are better than the rest (gold, silver, bronze)?

They also start the Olympics with the walk of nations. Maybe not as many people care about that, but I love to see each team walk down the way in their national garb waving to the crowd.

Agreed - As someone who got rid of cable and even ditched the OTA antenna (in the US), I couldn't watch any live coverage.

Since the news broadcasts (which are plentiful for cord-cutters) left the actual event-centric coverage to the NBC streams, most of the coverage I saw was of non-event specific news, primarily negative.

Yes! I had a similar reaction to that Bloomberg article. My wife and I wanted to watch the Olympics, but were unable to do so because we're not cable subscribers (we mostly use our Roku).

This quote from the article was just so tone deaf:

[CEO of Time Warner’s Turner division] Martin said, “I wonder if there was less content available -- and people felt more compelled to tune in to the traditional network -- whether that would bolster ratings.”

Totally agree. I love the Olympics but couldn't bear to watch it on NBC. I went on vacation to the Czech Republic and the coverage was so much better - fewer adverts, actually real-time, and a good cross section of sporting events. My kids loved it, especially the Mongolian wrestling controversy. So sad NBC are looking to blame someone else for their out-dated and over commercialized offering.

#nbcfail

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nbcfail

What's amazing to me is that even with broadcast TV, theoretically the medium that they have the most experience with, they still delivered an abysmal product that the author was kind in describing as "tolerable".

Ha, Author here - I believe I had originally typed "tolerable at best", but must have rephrased it at some point for some reason.

To me the whole thing felt like an awful extended episode of The Today Show. Watered down to make it just digestible enough you might put up with it.

Similar experience, in Canada.

Couldn't figure out how to legally watch the Olympics, using any available device.

If a provider can't be bothered to supply a legal, payed option using tools available to a large segment of the population, perhaps their marketing department needs an overhaul.

Was CBC not streaming through their app and website? I didn't watch the opening ceremony, but I was able to watch events through the app. I also do not have a cable subscription and CBC worked well for me.

Huh? I watched it every night either at http://olympics.cbc.ca/ or over the air with my coat-hanger antenna.

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