In news that will shock no one who reads this next sentence, I was very excited for the launch of the Olympic Channel over the weekend. In fact, I actually called my cable company during the week to make sure that I got it (I do). And, despite some initial glitches (it was just a black screen for the first few hours), I'm impressed by what I've seen so far.
This isn't the first time the USOC has attempted to launch an Olympic Channel. Comcast and the USOC were ready to launch way back in 2009, but they met a ton of resistance from the IOC. That's putting it mildly. The IOC was not happy at all, and a lot of people think that was one of the things that led to Chicago's embarrassing first-round defeat in the race for the 2016 Games (which obviously went to Rio).
So what's the difference now? The IOC is on board. They have their own Olympic Channel, and they actually encouraged NBC to launch an American version. Branded as "The Home of Team USA," the Olympic Channel promises to show a number of sports that you ordinarily wouldn't see on TV outside of the Olympics. (The fact that NBC already had the rights to many of these events certainly helped.)
For example, if you had told me that I'd be sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon watching men's synchronized diving just because I could, my reaction would've been "Yeah, right." But there I was on Saturday, watching the men's synchronized springboard at the World Championships. There's been a steady helping of the Aquatics World Championships on the Olympic Channel over the network's first few days. They've shown diving, water polo and synchronized swimming, and they'll have the morning prelims when swimming starts over the weekend.
The swimming finals will be on NBC and NBCSN, which was a point NBC Olympic executives were sure to make. The major events that you would expect to see on regular TV still will be. That means your World Championships in swimming and track & field. What we're seeing on the Olympic Channel is the niche stuff that the casual fan won't make it a point to watch. Case in point, they showed a preliminary round water polo game between Greece and Spain this afternoon. When would you have seen any preliminary round game, even one involving the U.S., at the water polo World Championships before the Olympic Channel came around?
It wasn't just the water sports, though. They've been showing the Paralympic track & field World Championships, and I've watched two U.S. women's volleyball matches. That Olympic Channel launch special has been on about half a dozen times a day, too (I give them credit for doing 24 hours without infomercials, though). I've also seen on the program guide for this weekend the World Games, which are the Olympics for non-Olympic sports. Did any of you even know that such a thing existed?
Yes, most of this stuff is content NBC acquired when Universal Sports went out of business. Since then, they had been showing most of it on the now-defunct Universal HD, which primarily showed reruns of broadcast shows and movies when it didn't randomly have the NBC Sports events. They never really fit there. But that's exactly the type of programming that the Olympic Channel was made for. And there are plenty of Olympic fans who will soak up the year-round content.
And some of that year-round content looks pretty intriguing. In addition to the sports coverage, they'll have Olympic documentaries, both from the IOC's vast library and ones that they've produced themselves. And, perhaps most excitingly, past Olympics. The 2008 Opening Ceremony is on sometime this week, and they're going to show all eight games from the Dream Team in late August. Who could possibly not be excited about that?
Although, their archived Olympic coverage is somewhat limited, which is the only "problem" I have with that. This isn't NBC's fault since they only own the rights to Games they've covered, but how cool would it be to see the Miracle on Ice or the 1984 LA Games? Likewise, one of their documentaries will be on the 20th anniversary of the Nagano hockey tournament, the first one featuring NHL players (irony of that is not lost, especially since NBC carries the NHL), but they can't show any of those actual games since the 1998 Olympics were on CBS.
How the Olympic Channel is going to be used during the Olympics themselves remains to be seen. Again, they stressed that the whole point is to promote Team USA between Olympics. Although, with the PyeongChang Winter Games coming up in February, we'll find out soon. My guess is that it'll either be some type of overflow channel for hockey (think the soccer/basketball subchannels last year in Rio) or they'll have studio analysis.
What I am sure about is that they won't show live event coverage on the Olympic Channel (unless they do use it as an overflow hockey channel). Not with the amount of money NBC spends to be the Olympic rights holder.
However they decide to utilize the Olympic Channel in PyeongChang and Tokyo and beyond really doesn't matter. That's not the point of the channel. The point of the channel is to keep Team USA relevant beyond those two weeks every other year. And so far, it's working. It's only been three days, but so far, so good.
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