Dear NBC executives--
Good afternoon. First I want to thank you and commend you for doing a good job, even though I don't really know what it is that you do. I know that one common thought is that the only thing that is important to executives is money...making more money. Whether or not it is true at NBC is besides the point. Overall, I'm pleased with your channel even though the whole Leno/Conan thing was weird...which is again, besides the point.
The point of this little letter is about the Olympics which you have the sole privilege of broadcasting. I think it is good when sport events and other major activities are aired on one specific channel. It allows that broadcast to be the "top dog," so to speak which brings more money for you all. So kudos on getting the Olympics. Granted there are lot of things about your line of work that I don't understand but as the consumer...as a valuable customer...I have one complaint about your broadcasting on the Olympics.
It sucks. Yes, I said "sucks" in a letter which is very unprofessional. So now, let me apologize for my language. With that out of the way, let me explain why I think the coverage sucks.
1. Granted, I am at work from 8am-5pm, Monday-Friday...so what I'm missing, I don't know. But what I do know is that from 5:30pm-8pm, there is nothing about the Olympics besides some occasional meaningless updates. Then from 8-11pm or so, NBC crams in the days worth of competitions.
2. What point #1 means is that since a days worth of competition is then crammed into 3 or so hours, the valued customers end up only seeing fragmented clips of what happened that day, never getting the chance to see any sport coverage in detail.
3. What point #2 means is that since we only get to see fragmented clips, the only athletes we hear about are the American althetes or those who are anticipated to provide stronger competition to our American althetes. If you are not considered to be in either of those categories, than we shall never hear of them.
4. What point #1 also means is I can go online and find out who won what long before it even gets aired on NBC, which was amusing the first time but kind of pathetic afterwards, in my honest opinion.
I'm sure NBC gets gobs of money from sole Olympic advertisements and from sole Olympic coverage. Is there a reason you could not block out most of your daytime TV shows, for the two weeks, just so that you could cover the Olympics live? I get that it would be somewhat early for the East Coast. But for me on the West Coast, in the same time zone as Vancouver, it seems like the Olympics could be covered more on-time, more in-depth and just all around more. After all, this exciting event only happens every 4 years, unlike the annual Super Bowl (and the many preceeding games) which is always covered in depth.
While I don't desire to resort to threats, let me be honest in saying that the frustrating coverage has left me wanting more...so I've sought more from other stations (mainly Canadian stations)...anything but NBC. Anyhow, I think that is about it. Thank you for sharing in my venting.
Sincerely,
Mindy
3 comments:
Amen! I totally agree. You can watch live online during the day, but it's a premium service and you have to be a cable customer, which isn't so bad except if you're like me and you don't know your account number or password. hmmph.
Here we only get it from 9am-11am and then from 9:30pm so i have seen zero Olympics because I'm either at school or in bed.
Thanks Channel 9.
During the last Olympics in Torino, Italy, I was in Germany. The station we watched was Eurosport which was fan-tas-tic! At least from what I remember, it was great coverage...we pretty much watched the Olympics all day, if I remember correctly. And it was live. (Sigh...the good old days).
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