On Watching the Olympics "Live"

Usain Bolt won the men's 200 gold, setting the world record in the process. This will be broadcast tonight during prime-time on NBC as if it were live. In fact, NBC might even put a little "live" graphic up in the corner.

Despite the fact that many events can be easily broadcast live, NBC chooses to rebroadcast them on tape delay during prime-time. This is not a bad idea, and it used to work well, even as late as the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. But now, the internet has made a mockery of it. All the "major" results, the meat of NBC's prime-time schedule, are shown on the front page of every news and sports website in America.

Now, I know I'm not the only person who checks sports online about once a day. In fact, I think most people in America visit some sort of news site at least once a day. This should drain all the drama out of the Olympics, and in fact, it sometimes does. But usually I enjoy "watching how it happened," especially in the case of gymnastics.

The only annoying thing was the other night, when NBC, near the end of its broadcast, played a short bit about how the Olympics were causing people to stay up late because they wanted to see how it ended. Then Costas said that this was caused by the time difference! They showed a light-hearted video of people talking about how they were staying up really late in order to see the gymnastics final, etc. This was ridiculous. The gymnastics final had been broadcast on significant tape delay--almost 12 hours! The results had been available online for a long time. People's sleeping problems don't come from the time differences, but from NBC's decision to have it end at 11:30 at night instead of earlier.