Truemors
Under development -
I have been a complete couch potato this whole Olympic games. Staying up into the wee hours of the morning watching records being smashed left and right, always believing that what I was seeing was live.
Last night my evening of viewing excitement was ruined, when during a commercial break about 15 minutes before Phelps made his Olympic "Attempt" for 8, I popped online to check for messages and refreshed the news page that was up in my tabs and then BAM "Phelps wins historic 8th" pops up.
This morning I confirmed NBC has been warping time during the Olympics and Boldly doing so without a care.
It augmented its stand-alone “LIVE” graphic with another one that said “LIVE,” with the time in the Eastern and Central time zones, and the time in Beijing, too. This is supposed to tell Mountain and Pacific viewers that what they’re seeing is on tape.
I never once felt the need to check to see if we were being fed a taped program of the Olympics here in the Pacific Time Zone, because I kept seeing the "Live" banner, and never a long or explained contrary announcement.
Those western viewers could be excused if they were reading mixed messages from NBC’s time warping. While they might have seen the time zone graphic, appearing for an average of 14 seconds at a time, they are also seeing the plain old “Live” graphic far more: 29 separate times on Tuesday for a total of 133 minutes.
I have only seen the graphic once myself, mid week during a recap. I know that is not allot to go on in making an accusation, but it would seem it was placed in such a spot on purpose to give the impression that only that portion was "taped earlier", but everything else with the big Live banner is "LIVE"
I have to agree with Richard Sandomir from the New York Times who confirmed my suspicions this morning.
changes would represent courtesies to the tens of millions of viewers who, despite living in disadvantaged time zones, are devoting hours each night to NBC. In fact, as NBC notes, some western markets are among the highest rated for the Beijing Games.
The Olympic games have been ruined for me. I suffered through Phelps 8th knowing the outcome, while keeping it to myself as my family watched in awe of what might come.
The assumption is that NBC knew ratings for the Olympics on the west coast would drop if viewers knew the footage was taped, and therefor took the minimal effort at disclosure.
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