Campfire: Should One Network Have Exclusive Control of All Media from the Olympics?

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Permalink Reply by Drew on August 8, 2008 at 7:47pm

honestly totally messed up. the Olympics are supposed to be about coming together, not what the most money will buy. would people allow our rights to freedom to be bought for one billion dollars? same thing.

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Permalink Reply by Niegel on August 9, 2008 at 12:38am

it doesn't matter. people are going to put pictures up anyways. its the Internet for Christ sake. let me ask you, how many people on mix is this going to effect? also, doesn't the Olympic committee have to agree on this. wheres the blame in them. basically what im trying to get at is stop bitching and just enjoy the games.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Rosenberg on August 9, 2008 at 12:40am

Hey Nigel,

Check out this story from Yahoo Sports, specifically this line:

"Meanwhile, attempts to circumvent the blackout on Youtube were quickly clamped down. Although several users of the popular video-sharing site appeared to have posted clips of the ceremony, the items were later blocked."

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Permalink Reply by Niegel on August 9, 2008 at 11:10am

will this stop torrents....no. will this stop smaller video sharing sites...no. will it stop sites with live streams like stickam...no. notice what you said was popular video sharing site. there under more pressure to take stuff like this down because they dont want to get sued.

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Permalink Reply by fussbudget on August 9, 2008 at 12:46pm

Sorry for the rambling and lack of grammatical sense. But hey. This is upsetting.
Find more videos like this on MIX

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Permalink Reply by Alex V. on August 12, 2008 at 6:02am

What NBC is doing is the capitalist thing to do. They want exclusivity so they can get big money from advertising. I'm no expert, but I think that if I were at the Olympics and took pictures while sitting in the audience, I would be the copyright owner for them, not NBC. Over here in Romania I'm not aware of any such thing. The Olympics are broadcast on two national public tv stations and on another cable channel, Eurosport. Also, I've seen other tv stations show live results, so I don't think anyone has absolute exclusivity. It's a sad thing what NBC is doing. Hai Romania!

PS: Right now, basketball: USA 55 - 41 Angola, 8 minutes to go in 3rd.

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Permalink Reply by Frank Freeman on August 12, 2008 at 1:23pm

NO THE END !

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Permalink Reply by Taiwan Brown on August 13, 2008 at 6:39pm

I can't believe that they even put on the "LIVE" bug on the screens :(

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Permalink Reply by Jason Rosenberg on August 17, 2008 at 3:36pm

That bothers me too!

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Permalink Reply by Markie on August 16, 2008 at 10:48pm

i can't really blame NBC for buying the tv rights, if they didnt buy it, it would just have been another company, you cant blame them for delaying since they want to get a juicy profit. but you can always dl them. lol

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Permalink Reply by Jason Rosenberg on August 17, 2008 at 3:48pm

Of course! And NBC bought the rights for the next couple of Olympics at a much costlier rate. However, the question isn't should NBC have paid for the content because as a business decision, it's a good one. More people tuning into their channels means they get to charge higher ad rates. (And if you're in the U.S. and watching the Olympics, you'll notice that there are a lot of ads!) Higher rates means they make more money.
The question is, should NBC be the exclusive holder of the information for the American audience?
They've embargoed the opening ceremonies, they've embargoed all sorts of events so they can show it when they want to as opposed to as they happen. Now my question to you is, is this fair? In the age of new media should we be able to watch events as they happen or when the most audience is available to watch?

I was at a restaurant last night when Michael Phelps swam his record-breaking race. Everyone in the place got up from their seats and went to the bar area where there were two TVs showing the race. People were cheering and going wild. It was what they like to call a water-cooler moment or appointment television. It was fun to be part of the community. However, because NBC wanted to show the event in primetime in each media market, my friends on the East Coast as well as CNN, all twittered the results.

So being in mountain time, the event aired two hours prior in the East Coast. So I didn't need to watch the event because I already knew the outcome.

Taiwan notes that NBC had a "LIVE" bug on the screen, but where I was, it wasn't live. Should it have been live across the country so everyone everywhere could see it? Now that I know the outcome can I watch it online? Should I be able to?

NBC is advertising DVDs of the opening ceremonies and Phelps races. So you know they won't allow free video to be online. Is that fair to stop us from watching video of events that we already know the outcome to? But why shouldn't NBC be allowed to do that, it's their content?

Sorry for the long response, I've just been thinking about it.

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Permalink Reply by Alex V. on August 17, 2008 at 4:15pm

Wow, I was under the impression that everyone across the US saw the Olympics live. That's messed up. Such an important sporting event should be aired live, regardless of time zone. I remember when the Olympics were in Atlanta in 1996 I sometimes stayed up long into the early hours of the morning to see some live events.

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