The Lost Peacock
An inside out account of NBC’s doomed broadcast model… Guess what? The ones producing these Games can’t stand tape delay either…
It’s 9pm London time, 4pm on the east coast of the U.S. The swimming finals have just ended and the NBC production crew has just produced another session of Olympic action. Now it’s time to get to work. That is, chopping up the footage, re-calling some races, cutting some features, and otherwise tweaking their coverage until it’s just right and ready to air four hours later. Or five or six or seven hours later, depending on when it finally makes it into NBC’s primetime broadcast.
The talented folks doing this insane amount of work, they get it. They know – even more than you do – that these events should be airing live. They know it’s infinitely better that way, despite the inevitable in-the-moment imperfections. They know this because most of them spend the rest of their days producing other sporting events. Ones that air live. Like the NFL and Wimbledon and, say, the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Omaha.
