Summer Olympic Games 2020 Broadcasters

[Dragon 2,073]

43 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

NBC is good, but they're not that good.  They'll figure out a way to deal with the Olympics being in Europe.  Bigger question is what happens in 2032.  Does NBC beg FINA to swap them like they did here or will the Aussies tell them to piss off?  I'm guessing it's the latter

Interesting problem. NBC just used to delay showing stuff until prime time but can they do that in the internet era where everything can be seen live via other sources?

[Quaker2001 339]

42 minutes ago, Dragon said:

Interesting problem. NBC just used to delay showing stuff until prime time but can they do that in the internet era where everything can be seen live via other sources?

Yes and no.  They have streaming of everything, so they can satisfy that audience and not have them resort to alternate means (say, getting a VPN to watch from another country).  But they'll still embargo news outlets from showing anything until a set time, especially for events they know they'll show on primetime

[Orangehair43 315]

4 minutes ago, Quaker2001 said:

Yes and no.  They have streaming of everything, so they can satisfy that audience and not have them resort to alternate means (say, getting a VPN to watch from another country).  But they'll still embargo news outlets from showing anything until a set time, especially for events they know they'll show on primetime

Yet NBC News app send news alerts announcing high profile victories not being shown live.

[Olympian1010 8,301]

1 minute ago, Quaker2001 said:

Yes and no.  They have streaming of everything, so they can satisfy that audience and not have them resort to alternate means (say, getting a VPN to watch from another country).  But they'll still embargo news outlets from showing anything until a set time, especially for events they know they'll show on primetime

The issue for them is actually written news. They might be able to embargo broadcast news, but they can’t really do anything about me getting a news alert on my phone the minute I wake up that says “Biles pulls out of Team Event at Olympics,” or “Suni Lee wins All-Around Competition at Olympics,” or “Rapione scores goal to take US Women into semifinals.” While that might encourage someone to watch the prime time coverage; it might also make them skip watching the Games for day since they already know the outcome.

 

Plus, they might be able to embargo broadcast news from showing footage from an event, but they can’t really stop them from reporting on results, controversies, etc. with generic images or newsflashes/chirons.

[Grassmarket 4,305]

The ,ost famous case was the Miracle on Ice Hockey game in 1980. It actually took place mid-afternoon in upstate New York & went out live on a local channel. But the whole US media kept the secret until it was shown hours later.

[Orangehair43 315]

21 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

The ,ost famous case was the Miracle on Ice Hockey game in 1980. It actually took place mid-afternoon in upstate New York & went out live on a local channel. But the whole US media kept the secret until it was shown hours later.

It wouldn’t work now a days because the majority of people would see the result on social media even if the broadcast media totally ignored it. 

[Mkbw50 475]

My thoughts on the coverage (having mostly watched BBC) is:
 

Each day, they start the overnight coverage at about midnight with JJ Chalmers,

Then they move to "Olympic Breakfast" from 6-9am presented by Dan Walker and Sam Quek.

After that, they move to a show presented by Hazel Irvine, until 3pm when the live action has stopped and there is a review program presented by Jason Mohammed, and there are other highlight programs in the day.

 

The overnight programme is good, with Chalmers a very good presenter, who usually lets the experts in the sport do most of the talking, which is a good idea. Hazel Irvine is obviously someone that I don't have a bad word to say about either, who talks a bit more but is knowledgable enough to do so. The main problem for me is the "Olympic Breakfast" programme, which mainly focuses on medals Britain won overnight, and will only show live coverage if there is a British medal chance. The presenters are also too informal (this is a problem in general, but in the Breakfast programme particularly), forgetting the Olympics is elite sport and treating it like a sports day in primary school. Interviews with a British medallist's family are a common annoyance on this programme.

 

That said, the analysts and commentators have been in general very good. Lutalo Muhammad on Taekwondo was excellent, and Mark Foster is a great voice for swimming. In general, when people who know their sport are talking, it's good. When Dan Walker reveals that his kids have been "loving the gymnastics", less so.

 

The BBC has two streams, BBC One as I have described above, and the "Red Button", which is pure sport with no analysis, generally avoiding having the same thing on both. This means it's a lottery whether you can actually watch what you want to, because the BBC utterly refuse to show more than two events at once at all times.

 

A lot of people have complained about Eurosport, but I can only say I have had no problem with them. For me, they have been excellent when I've wanted to watch an archery or judo match that the BBC think isn't 'important enough' to show. Even when the BBC had 100% coverage, they wouldn't show every apparatus, or every judo mat - I'm pretty sure this was an oversight. So now we have complete, 100%, uninterrupted OBS coverage - excepting the Archery Ranking Round and Shooting qualifiers - complete with no ads, and no interviews with Adam Peaty's family. I should note that the channel choices seem deliberately bad to me as well, but I don't really mind paying for one month of Eurosport Player to watch the Olympic Games, considering that Sky Sports costs more than five times the same

[Orangehair43 315]

31 minutes ago, Mkbw50 said:

My thoughts on the coverage (having mostly watched BBC) is:
 

Each day, they start the overnight coverage at about midnight with JJ Chalmers,

Then they move to "Olympic Breakfast" from 6-9am presented by Dan Walker and Sam Quek.

After that, they move to a show presented by Hazel Irvine, until 3pm when the live action has stopped and there is a review program presented by Jason Mohammed, and there are other highlight programs in the day.

 

The overnight programme is good, with Chalmers a very good presenter, who usually lets the experts in the sport do most of the talking, which is a good idea. Hazel Irvine is obviously someone that I don't have a bad word to say about either, who talks a bit more but is knowledgable enough to do so. The main problem for me is the "Olympic Breakfast" programme, which mainly focuses on medals Britain won overnight, and will only show live coverage if there is a British medal chance. The presenters are also too informal (this is a problem in general, but in the Breakfast programme particularly), forgetting the Olympics is elite sport and treating it like a sports day in primary school. Interviews with a British medallist's family are a common annoyance on this programme.

 

That said, the analysts and commentators have been in general very good. Lutalo Muhammad on Taekwondo was excellent, and Mark Foster is a great voice for swimming. In general, when people who know their sport are talking, it's good. When Dan Walker reveals that his kids have been "loving the gymnastics", less so.

 

The BBC has two streams, BBC One as I have described above, and the "Red Button", which is pure sport with no analysis, generally avoiding having the same thing on both. This means it's a lottery whether you can actually watch what you want to, because the BBC utterly refuse to show more than two events at once at all times.

 

A lot of people have complained about Eurosport, but I can only say I have had no problem with them. For me, they have been excellent when I've wanted to watch an archery or judo match that the BBC think isn't 'important enough' to show. Even when the BBC had 100% coverage, they wouldn't show every apparatus, or every judo mat - I'm pretty sure this was an oversight. So now we have complete, 100%, uninterrupted OBS coverage - excepting the Archery Ranking Round and Shooting qualifiers - complete with no ads, and no interviews with Adam Peaty's family. I should note that the channel choices seem deliberately bad to me as well, but I don't really mind paying for one month of Eurosport Player to watch the Olympic Games, considering that Sky Sports costs more than five times the same

The BBC do not have the rights to air more than two events at once - the deal their did with Discovery to keep rights for 2022 and 2024 (As discovery was talking about setting up their own freeview Channel) have prevented that. 
 

 

[Mkbw50 475]

Just now, Orangehair43 said:

The BBC do not have the rights to air more than two events at once - the deal their did with Discovery to keep rights for 2022 and 2024 (As discovery was talking about setting up their own freeview Channel) have prevented that. 
 

 

A lot of the time though, Auntie isn't even showing a live event on BBC One. So they have two streams, but only one (and sometimes none) of them are showing live sport. We missed a lot of the Athletics because they were showing BMX on Red Button (understandably because GB were about to win two medals) and... boxing highlights on BBC One.

[Federer91 3,386]

Yeah, i had my doubts about Eurosport Player, but it turned out it is excellent. If you take out that first day, which had no commentary of course.