Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

After a Delay, Olympic Opening Ceremony Finally Hits the West Coast

If you have been following along on NBC’s Olympics Twitter account, you will have heard all about the opening ceremony from London, from the appearance of the Queen with James Bond to the roar of the crowd when the U.S. team entered the arena.

There’s only one problem: NBC is just now starting its coverage of the same ceremony for those of us on the West Coast. Plenty of tweets and re-tweets went out from NBC even before the ceremonies were shown on the East Coast.

Now, NBC has paid millions and millions for the rights to televise the games as they see fit. But tweeting about the same ceremony that they made us wait for seems a bit cruel. (I wasn’t alone in that sentiment, as clear from this Wall Street Journal blog, in which I was quoted.)

Thankfully, NBC is offering live coverage of the athletics themselves, a welcome change from the Vancouver games, where key sports were also shown on tape delay. And, in a first, the games will also be available on mobile devices, for those who have a pay-TV subscription that includes CNBC and MSNBC.

For its part, an NBC representative had this to say about its decision to delay its broadcast of the opening festivities:

“They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large primetime audiences that gather together to watch them,” the network told The Wall Street Journal.

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google