ESPN will challenge NBC for Olympic coverage, with ESPN offering to cover all events live. This will work well for the 2016 Rio Olympics, since Rio’s time zone is close to the US, only two hours ahead of EST. It’s easy to schedule events in prime time. Sochi, Russia, may be a different story. Sochi is eight hours ahead of US EST.
What I assume ESPN will do is show and stream events live, then during prime time, when the folks in Russia should be asleep, produce a typical prime-time taped Olympic show.
Let’s face it, most people, even with computers, can’t watch live sports at work. By making it available live, however, people can record the events they want to see and watch them when they desire. Yes, I will get up early in the morning to watch curling. 🙂
I just hope they get rid of the up-close and personal segments. Given that ESPN is part of the ABC family, that’s not likely to happen.
The problem with watching the winter Olympics live is that many of the events have lots of competitors who have no chance to win, and if you’re watching live you have to watch them before you get to the potential winners. And having sat through the entire short program in ice dancing back in Lake Placid, where 30 or more couples do the same routine to the same music, I can assure you that seeing it live is torture. I don’t mind events being taped and edited for TV — I just don’t like the way NBC does it. Last week I was in Switzerland and watched its non-live version. It was much better (perhaps because I couldn’t understand the audio).
I’ll support ESPN if they’ll lean on the IOC to bring back baseball and softball and eliminate some superfluous events (really, do we need rhythmic gymnastic?), as long as we’re dreaming.
Its ESPN. For Sochi, can they show the events live (if you are a big fan of a particular sport you get up early), and then do a long Sports Center style wrap up, with highlights, during prime time, though the highlights would be more extended than for normal Sports Centers.
Given what a dead month February is for professional North American sports, a three hour Sports Center, 90% of which is devoted to the Olympics, would work.
My problem with NBC coverage is excess nationalism (though it was fun to go to Canada and see all the concentration there on Canadian athletes), and too many and too long human interest stories. I remember one Olympics, I think it was Sydney, where they barely showed the actual sporting events, except on the premium cable packages. I keep forgeting that there was an Olympics in Sydney, I saw so little of it.