Beijing Olympics: NBC Sucks |History: The Roadmap to the Future--Asia

NBC sucks. The sole American broadcaster of the Beijing Olympics has advertised that they will be showing video of the Olympics on the Internet for the duration of the games. For a while, this was the case. Video could be watched, with relatively few hindrances. There were some, such as delaying showing the starting ceremony, and they also do not show live other big parts of the Olympics because there is still more revenue to be won from television advertisements than Internet ones. Still, by and large, NBC was tolerable as the exclusive provider of the Olympics to Americans (legally).

But now they've gone to far. They've made deals with cable and satellite television companies, and today restrict access to (at least old) Olympic coverage to subscribers of those cable and satellite television providers.

This is in contrast to Britons, who receive Olympics coverage from the BBC for free (although they pay for the BBC through taxes when they buy televisions), including on the Internet.

Now, you can illegally watch the Olympics on the Internet if you are an American without cable or satellite television, but that would be illegal, and some Americans still consider illegality a crime. So NBC is even more disgusting for those people.

Not only do commercials cut out parts of the Olympics, but now the NBC leadership is gouging their audience to try to boost their ratings--to an excessive degree. There is a similar thing with hulu.com, run jointly by NBC and FOX. Rupert Murdoch gets slimed for being an evil capitalist, and yet even a mild familiarity with hulu.com will show that by-and-far NBC is the most stingy and restrictive of the two. FOX by comparison is downright generous.

NBC should be punished, and should lose the exclusive license to show the Olympics to Americans.