There's lots of complaints about TV coverage of the Olympics, globally. What improvements do you suggest?

Question

Being realistic, how do you think the TV stations could have made coverage better?

Keep in mind:

- broadcast rights cost a lot of money and TV stations aren't charities so they need advertising

- there are some contractual obligations to other sports rights they have that may mean they need to show something else other than Olympics at times as well

- They are only one station to show all sports and different sports are played simultaneously meaning that not everything can be live

I am just interested in hearing how people would have liked to see the Olympics broadcast differently seeing as I see so many people complaining.

Answer 1

The best coverage I remember was with the "Olympic Triplecast" in '92.  Viewers were able to get 3 dedicated channels of programming with PPV.  All 3 showed live feeds during the 12 hours that the events were held.  Then repeated for the next 12.  Some of the programing was also on the regular NBC affiliates.  

I believe that it was ahead of its time.  In the past 20 years people have become more comfortable with PPV events.  The cost of 3 dedicated analog channels in the tight packed lineups in 1992 was enormous.  With today's digital technology it would be much more economically feasible to have not only dedicated channels, but VOD for each event, including the prelims.

Answer 2

I would like to see the stations being less biased. All they ever show are the Americans. It is sickening. Win or loose they are all they talk about.

If they loose they want to contest everything.

They just can't face the facts that someone else can be better at a sport than they can.

Answer 3

Here's what I would do to improve:

More coverage on Countries that aren't China and the United States, yeah I love my country but it gets old seeing the same two teams play against each other over and over again. I know that some countries don't rank high overall compared to these two countries but I would love to see how the UK, mexico, and France does in the olympics.

NBC owns a bunch of channels so they have no excuse for just limiting the broadcast. MSNBC what about the other cable news channels they have? Or what would be awesome is if they  offered and subsrciption to see all the sports in the Olmypics  like they do with Football games.

Answer 4

1.More variety, ie skip from event to event and cram as much as possible into the programming(see 3). It seems that there's no field events in athletics anymore for one example.Also there are other countries there besides Aust, China and the usa.

2. Less ads, maybe use strip ads, particularly in the middle of events.

2b. Less self promotion ads.

3. As another answerer suggested, use interactive tv and 6 or 7 channels showing as many events as possible.

4. Less slo-mo flashbacks and more live events.

5. Stop insulting our intelligence and showing replays as if they were live. Show it live or tell us its a replay.

To sum up, show as much sport as possible.

All in all I have been disappointed and frustrated with the coverage and can't wait till it's over. And I'm a big sports fan.

Answer 5

Do as the BBC does:-

Every event is live on Interactive with a choice of up to six live events that we can switch between at any time.

Impartial commentary.

There is no advertising at all, so there is uninterrupted coverage.

Answer 6

To be stop being so biased.

Answer 7

I would like them to stop interupting events to show ads. I know the tv station needs to make money and all, but so many times they cut in the middle of a game to show 5 mins of ads. by the time they come back to it, you have missed a lot. This has been most obvious in the basketball in Australia, where there have been a couple of games where they have gone to ads after a basket has been scored at the 6 minute mark, and dont come back from ads until the 2 or 3 minute mark.  

Answer 8

I think they should do it the way they did back in the 70's. It should run constantly with breaks for adverts and news programs. Other than that, it should run 24/7 and show events that people want to see. Track and field seem to consist of nothing but running events these days.