The Perils of Time Shifting
I’m sure that by now, most of you are aware that the Olympics are now in full swing. Being in Turin, Italy (I know that they always say Torino, but the city is actually Turin), many events happen while we are asleep since they are six hours ahead of we people in the Eastern time zone. To increase ratings, NBC crams an entire day’s worth of Olympics coverage into a three and a half hour program that starts at 8:00 in the evening. However, you must remember that when we start watching coverage of the Olympics, it is already midnight in Turin.
"So what?" you say. Well, I, being a lover of sports and an avid viewer of ESPN, tend to get all of the sports news, including news about the Olympics, at around 5:00 pm, three hours before NBC starts airing coverage. Yesterday, one of the big topics that was being covered was the disappointment of Jeremy Bloom in the Freestyle Moguls event, where he finished sixth. It took the excitement right out of watching the preliminaries and finals four hours later. It is really sad when you know exactly what someone is going to say in an interview before it is even aired on television.
So, to remedy this problem, should NBC air Olympic events live, or with a slight delay, ala Super Bowl? I think to do so would be folley, since not even I would be willing to start watching the Olympics at three in the morning. Then again, you never know. I am the same person that watched the World Cup of soccer in 2002 when all of the games started airing at around 6:00 in the morning. Then again, I was already up at six o’clock every morning that summer because of a swim camp.
