Sunday, I spent most of the evening watching the Winter Olympics on NBC presuming that eventually they would show the U.S vs. Canada hockey game, perhaps on tape. And then after watching curling, ice dancing, and innumerable commercials, Bob Costas interrupts the bobsled event (probably on tape) to bring us the last 30 seconds of the USA's surprise victory over Canada.
The next day I realize I could have watched the hockey on MSNBC (apparently, 8.22 million Americans did so) or on Canadian Broadcasting from Windsor ("the most watched sports program ever shown on Canadian television"-- 10.6 million viewers). Although I must fault myself for not seeing it, I do fault NBC for not even running a crawl keeping us up to date since they never intended to show it or by directing hockey fans to MSNBC or CNBC.
This afternoon, Wednesday, I watched most of the USA hockey team's victory over Switzerland, and it occurred to me that NBC will never show hockey in prime time. The reason is that hockey is continuous action and cannot be interrupted for commercials after every two minutes. On the other hand, NBC will feature ice dancing, an event that can only be considered a sport in the most liberal sense, because the network can chop it up into two-minute intervals as they can with skiing, skating, bobsledding etc. These short intervals of competition permit NBC to air another whole series of ads between each performance.
Granted NBC has invested heavily in the Winter Olympics and is presumably losing money, they do have a responsibility to the viewers since they possess exclusive rights in the US. If they are losing financially, it is because of their business model or they choose to lose in exchange for ratings.
On the other hand, I guess we should be thankful that it is NBC; they do make events available to MSNBC, CBC, and USA networks.
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