NBC's Western Tape Delays Make No Sense

Chris Chase of Fourth-Place Medal eloquently asserted the silliness of NBC's decision to tape-delay some major Olympic events for Rocky Mountain and West Coast digestion after forcing the IOC into moving prime events into odd Beijing times for maximum American consumption (like Michael Phelps' 10 a.m. gold medal race). Those very moves make perfect sense ... because tape delay sucks! It sucked in 2000, and it's even worse in the current megatechnic age, where scores scrawl across the TV, the phone, Times Square, the internet browser.

The Western tape delay is mystifying. This morning, NBC held the massive Team USA-China men's basketball game -- evidently witnessed by one billion people -- off for three hours in the Pacific time zone. Here in California, the telecast began an hour after the game ended.

Broadband customers had the ability to watch the game live online ... if you received cable service from an approved partner, like Comcast. If, like me, you get your cable from a small local company, you couldn't get live Olympic video without lying about your location and cable provider. It shouldn't be this difficult for the West Coast's 15 million residents to see a damn basketball game at 7 a.m. when everyone else in the world gets it live. We're adults, we can handle waking up early.

I'd venture to say NBC lost more Western viewers to the web (which isn't making the Peacock much money) than it would have with the earlier broadcast time. Hopefully, they figure it out and rework the Western broadcast schedule. I'm not holding my breath, though.