If criticizing and complaining were Olympic events, there's no doubt what country would win the gold medal. Hands down. It wouldn't even be close. The U.S. would probably take the silver and bronze, too.
Through the first four days of these Olympics, I've heard more whining about NBC's use of tape delay in primetime than I have about the actual events. The fact that a vast majority of the daytime coverage is live hasn't been mentioned once. (They came on the air at 5 a.m. on Saturday to show the men's road race in cycling.) Nor has the fact that virtually all of the cable coverage is live, too. (NBC Sports Network's coverage starts at 4 a.m. everyday.) Or the variety of sports that have been shown on the various NBC networks. On Saturday, live events were being shown on five different networks at the same time. And the prime time thing isn't exactly NBC's fault. I'm not sure what it is people would like them to do. London is five hours ahead of New York. Prime time on the East Coast is the middle of the night in London! In order to show any competition in prime time, it has to be on tape. (By the way, it's going to be worse two years from now in Sochi.)
The only reason people even care about the tape delay is because the swimming finals take place in the middle of the afternoon here, but aren't being shown until prime time. During the swimming finals, NBC is showing other live events. TV networks can't show two things at the same time. How dare they think that people would rather watch swimming than a preliminary round men's water polo match when they're actually home watching TV!
And here's the thing, NBC's not preventing anybody from watching events live. In fact, they're encouraging it. They're streaming every event live at NBCOlympics.com. This isn't Sydney, where they showed everything on tape and pretended it was live. They're expecting you to already know what happened when/if you watch the prime time broadcast. If you want to wait to see it on TV, that's your option. But you can't blame NBC for not being able to see things live because it's simply not true.
A vast majority of the griping is coming from the West Coast, which is three hours further behind. As a result, the stuff that's live on the East Coast is on a three-hour delay, and the delay on the other events is even longer. I can imagine this is incredibly frustrating, and it's something I've never experienced. But guess what, it's not NBC's fault you live in California! They can't produce a separate West Coast broadcast while they're in the middle of the East Coast show.
Predictibly, people have gone on Twitter to voice their displeasure. Chalk this up as another reason why I hate Twitter. I think a majority of people who are going on Twitter to complain about Olympic coverage are doing it only because they can. Guarantee a majority of them don't actually care. They're probably the same people who answer "I don't watch the Olympics" on those poll questions. If that's the case, what difference does it make to you if the coverage is live or not? Some people have also gone public with their various methods of avoiding NBC's coverage and watching the Olympics by other means. Great. Good for you. Who cares? If you hate NBC so much, go ahead and find a way to watch illegally. (My other favorite criticism is that they focus too much on the American athletes. The American network focuses on the American athletes. How dare they!)
Now, I'm not saying NBC should be completely immune from criticism for its coverage of the Olympics so far. There was no reason to cut out that section of the Opening Ceremony to show Ryan Seacrest's interview with Michael Phelps, which seemed oddly placed in the middle of the broadcast. They ran a spolier for the Today Show that gave away the fact Missy Franklin won a gold medal in a race they hadn't shown yet. There's no reason to make Kerri and Misty play the 11 p.m. local time match if you're tape-delaying them for prime time anyway. And the live streaming has certainly had its share of problems (which led to one Tweet that I actually found pretty funny: "NBC introduces a new Olympic event...buffering.")
The only complaints that I find valid, though, are the ones about the live streaming. The buffering is definitely a problem. You also need to have a valid cable package that includes all of the NBC cable channels in order to access the webstream, so anybody who doesn't have cable can't watch the Olympics online even if they want to, which is unfortunate. I'm also not sure how I feel about waiting to archive the live broadcast of the stuff they're going to show on the broadcast network until after it airs. I get it. I'm just not sure how I feel about it.
My "favorite" criticism that I've read so far, though came from Bob Raissman in today's New York Daily News. He basically said that NBC needs to figure something out for 2016 because people "won't stand for it anymore." Where are the 2016 Olympics again? Oh, that's right. Brazil. What's the time difference between New York and Brazil? One hour. They're not going to have this same problem in Rio.
So, you want live swimming in prime time. Fine. You'll get it in Rio. Although, I'm sure people will find a way to complain about that, too.
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