Olympic Channel Going Dark

When NBC announced last week that they were shutting down the Olympic Channel on September 30, it wasn't a total shock.  The writing's been on the wall ever since NBCSN went off the air at 12:00:01 am on New Year's Day.  But it still sucks!

One of the articles I read explaining NBC/Universal's decision actually made a lot of sense.  With a linear TV channel, you need to negotiate a price with cable companies.  Peacock is direct-to-consumer, though, so they're cutting out the middle man.  And Olympic Channel features niche content, which perfectly lends itself to streaming.  So, while that likely wasn't the main reason, I'm sure both of those factors contributed.

I'll be the first to admit that Olympic Channel, while great for Olympic fans, is very repetitive.  There's some live and/or first-run content, but it's primarily replays of other NBC events, as well as old Olympic broadcasts and documentaries.  All of which can easily be watched on demand, which is presumably where it'll be found if NBC, as expected, transitions most of its Olympic Channel content to Peacock.

Most of what used to air on NBCSN is now on USA instead.  That includes all of NBC Sports' marquee properties.  That likely won't change.  USA is a basic cable channel that has a much wider reach than either NBCSN or Olympic Channel did, which was part of the reason they moved the content there to begin with.  I doubt everything that's on Olympic Channel will move to USA, though, which is why losing it sucks.

For example, this year's World Swimming Championships were on Olympic Channel, with a two-hour recap show on NBC.  In 2019 (the last year Summer Olympic sports World Championships were on a regular schedule), they showed the entire World Aquatics Championships.  Not just swimming, but diving, water polo and artistic swimming, too.  This year, we saw none of that.  Next year, they'll be back on the normal schedule.  How much of that other stuff will actually be on TV now that Olympic Channel is going off the air?

Likewise, Olympic Channel has shown stuff like the Volleyball Nations League, World Cup gymnastics, archery, and so many others.  Non-Olympic events in Olympic sports that would otherwise never be shown on TV.  And I can't even count the number of winter sports that have been featured on Olympic Channel in the five years since it launched!

Although, to be fair, a lot of what's shown on Olympic Channel is repetitive.  Replays of events that previously aired on NBC or USA made complete sense, especially if people didn't get a chance to watch them earlier.  But those same replays were shown multiple times.  And, Olympic Channel has never been a 24-hour network.  They show infomercials overnight.  So, they're filling roughly 18 hours a day with the same content over and over.  So, from that perspective, Olympic Channel is not entirely necessary.

Some of their archived Olympic content was well worth the watch, though.  Right after the channel launched in 2017, they celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Dream Team by showing NBC's original broadcasts of all eight Olympic games.  That's just one example of the old-school Olympic content that's been featured.  In fact, they've done marathons of Olympic basketball gold medal games for both men and women (although, they don't include the 2004 men's gold medal game for some reason).  They've also had the men's gold medal beach volleyball match from 2000, women's gymnastics from 1988.

Perhaps my favorite archival Olympic content on Olympic Channel was the replays of Opening Ceremonies, going all the way back to Barcelona.  That one in particular was so incredible to relive!  Are rebroadcasts of Olympic ceremonies from 30 years ago that you can easily find on YouTube enough to sustain a cable network, however?  Of course not!

The Tour de France is on USA, but Olympic Channel had the other two cycling grand tours (the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta Espana).  The Rugby Nations League and World Cup started on Olympic Channel and proved so popular that they're shown on CNBC/USA instead now.  I'm not sure that happens without the exposure that Olympic Channel gave the sport. 

They didn't show any live Olympic coverage during either the PyeongChang or Beijing Winter Games, which may seem odd for a network named "Olympic Channel," but that was never the point.  In Tokyo, however, they did have live coverage on Olympic Channel, which was the TV home of tennis and wrestling.  That obviously won't be the case in Paris.

However, while they didn't show live Olympic content, Olympic Channel was the place to turn for Olympic Trials and qualifying events.  They didn't broadcast the mixed doubles curling qualifying tournament in January, but that was because a Dutch sex toy company was the sponsor NBC refused to show their logo!  Once the Curling World Championships came around, all three events (men's, women's, mixed doubles) were broadcast extensively on Olympic Channel.

Those marquee events will almost certainly still be on linear TV.  We won't see nearly as many of the smaller events, though.  There's simply not enough hours on USA, CNBC and NBC itself to migrate all of Olympic Channel's programming.  Which means some of it will be relegated only to Peacock.  Which could be great.  Or it could be terrible.

NBC hasn't officially announced its plans for what will happen with Olympic Channel content.  All they said in the release was, "We will be announcing our exciting new plans for Olympic content in the fall."  Right now, it's just a presumption that most of it will move to Peacock, although it would be very surprising if that isn't what ultimately happens.

That's what I'm curious about, though.  Will everything only be on Peacock?  Or will it be some sort of combination between Peacock and one of NBC's other cable channels?  I'd imagine that's the likely solution.  Because there's definitely some Olympic Channel content that they'll want to make sure stays on regular TV (in addition to streaming on Peacock).  For the most part, moving NBC's sports content to USA has worked out well, so it makes sense that they'd put some of what was shown on Olympic Channel there, too.

With streaming becoming more and more prevalent, it seemed like an inevitability that NBC would eventually shift its Olympic sports coverage to Peacock.  Although, even though it's something everybody knew would happen eventually, the Olympic Channel shutdown will still have an impact.  We just don't know how big of an impact.  Yet.