The Daily Sport-February 9th

This morning I’ll be going negative, so if you’re just reading this getting back from church and want to stay on that emotional high, good feeling, probably stop reading now. But….I am going to rant about a valid point (or at least valid to me); the Olympic televising is miserable when the Eastern hemisphere hosts the event.

The fact that the live sporting event is performed nearly a half-day in advance of prime-time surely makes NBC’s job of pleasing the masses (or at least the majority of them) nearly impossible, but the one thing I do know is that their current system just doesn’t cut it.  

So far, I've had nearly every Olympic medal given out ruined (spoiled) for me and it has truly left a sour taste in my mouth (along with the Americans' poor showing thus far). I recognize that the technological advances and constant need for immediacy rampant in journalism today force other networks to report the events as quickly as they transpire. The fact that the events transpire in the Eastern hemisphere basically a half-day ahead of the primetime viewing slots also put NBC, again, the primary carrier of the rights to air the Olympics, in a legitimate bind. Their options are: Ask their American viewers to take work off every day for a solid two weeks to show the events live during the day, and also change their sleeping patterns to watch events well past midnight as well, go with their current system, or ask the other networks to put a temporary hold on their newscasts (yeah, like that’s going to happen).

Again, whenever I’m ranting about something I at least give my best efforts toward offering a solution or change leading to a hopeful resolution to said problem so I will once more attempt at one here. 

This one is a tough one to crack. You would think an event with the enormity and scope of the Olympics would have the best and brightest minds in the business brainstorming daily for an alternative method of airing them to viewers. That being said, the idea that I could come up with some sort of ground-breaking, earth-shattering, revolutionary marketing idea is pretty preposterous. 

Lucky for you guys, I like the preposterous. My idea is fairly simple: as soon as the television rights deal runs out (which is probably about 2050, but still...hear me out) the Olympics should offer a fee to carry the rights available to every network. Each network has the rights to gain journalists' access to the games to report on the event if they agree to the full non-disclosure agreement requiring their signing off on releasing any information until the prime-time viewing of the events. 

Now, yes, I know Twitter, the internet and news agencies from different countries would release the information, but the Olympics would certainly be easier to avoid for those of us not wanting full spoiler status. 

Sorry for the negative rant on such an amazing event like the Olympics, but I had to get that one off my chest. 

Today will be better than yesterday.