July 2012

Journalist at The Independent has Twitter account suspended after complaining about NBC's coverage of London 2012 Olympics

[Commentary] On July 27, I was not watching the Olympic opening ceremony. Instead, I was quietly fuming at the fact that NBC, the US network which purchased rights to the entire Games, had come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea delay broadcast of this global news event until the evening prime-time, roughly nine hours after it had finished. This being the era of Twitter, I did not have to suffer in silence.

At around 2pm, I began posting a series of messages complaining about the company’s hugely-cynical policy. One of them suggested that frustrated viewers voice their complaints to Gary Zenkel, the President of NBC Olympics. “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel,” read the Tweet. “Tell him what u think!” It then contained Zenkel’s work email address. A few dozen people “re-Tweeted” the update over the ensuing hours. Several of them used the “hashtag” #NBCFail, which, thanks to the broadcaster’s comically inept coverage of the London games, has since been a trending topic on the microblogging site. Later that afternoon, I was invited on the Los Angeles talk radio station KNX 1070 to discuss the absence of live coverage of the ceremony. If I remember correctly, I declared myself “utterly outraged” during that two-minute interview, saying with only a hint of understatement that NBC was: “treating the people of America with contempt.” On July 29, I wrote a short article for The Independent growing criticism of NBC’s Olympics coverage, which has resulted in network TV viewers being shown almost no high profile events live, while commentators made a series of basic factual errors – among them, calling Luxembourg "a small, central European country.” Shortly after filing that article, I attempted to check my Twitter account. When I logged on, I was presented with a message saying it had been “suspended.” If I had any questions, I was asked to click on a link and fill in an online form.

I heard back from Twitter. In what was apparently an automated email, I was told that: “Your twitter account has been suspended for posting an individual's private information such as private email address.” It then contained a copy of my Tweet regarding Zenkel.

Olympics coverage by NBC News questioned

To cover this summer’s Olympic Games, NBC News will deploy a journalistic force of some 450 people, including 25 reporters and its lead anchorman, Brian Williams. The network has been featuring Olympic updates on the Williams-anchored “Nightly News” and softer stories every morning on the “Today” show for weeks.

By contrast, ESPN, the 24-hour sports network, has sent just two reporters to London, plus a handful of blogger-commentators. ABC News is fielding an on-air team of five. CBS News and Fox News are relying on their London bureaus, which have two correspondents apiece. The top anchormen of all four networks are staying home. What explains the difference in the coverage? NBC News says the Games are such an inherently compelling story that its massive commitment is justified. But it might be a little bit more complicated than that. The differing approaches to covering the Games may provide an illustration of the forces that sometimes shape the TV-news agenda. In this case, what constitutes “news” seems to depend on not just who’s playing, but also who’s paying.

Olympic Viewers Have a New Reason to Complain, and the Means to Do It

NBC might have believed that streaming all the sports live from the London Games would have inoculated it from criticism of its Olympic broadcasting policy. The past animosity rested on tape-delaying certain marquee sports into prime time. But now Twitter has turned into a fiery digital soapbox against NBC, as its users have merged their resentment over tape delay with problems viewing the live streams.

The outrage has been distilled, simply, into #nbcfail. It is difficult for now to determine if #nbcfail represents a tiny minority or is a sampling of a widespread problem. NBC believes it is the former. Tape delay has been an effective tool for all Olympic networks, which have rationalized its use with this mantra: we hold the marquee sports until prime time to harvest the highest rating and optimize our advertising so we can afford our ever-increasing rights fees. But fans long upset with tape delay have reason to keep complaining. Major sports are always televised live. Why not the Olympics? And with the tools available to NBC — multiple networks and the Internet — an all-live Olympics is possible.

Olympics 2012: From birds to broadband

Network solutions company AcmePacket collected a bunch of interesting Olympic communication stats from around the Web and created an infographic called “London Calling: Mobility & the Olympic Games.” The graphic traces the evolution of how competition results were transmitted to sports fans far and wide.

Beginning with the 776 B.C .games, and lasting until 384 A.D., when Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympics in a bid to enforce Christianity as a state religion, homing pigeons were the primary form of disseminating information. As centuries of Olympic radio silence passed, pigeons gave way to more technologically advanced methods, and by 1896, when the competition was revived by the newly formed International Olympic Committee, telegraphs replaced fowl as the messengers of choice. In 1924, the Olympics were broadcast over the radio for the first time, and in 1936, a live telecast was shown to viewers in Berlin and Potsdam, Germany. By 1960, the Games were being broadcast on television worldwide; 36 years later, in 1996, Atlanta hosted the first “Internet Olympics,” marked by the competition’s very own Web page. Today, a mere 16 years later, we have the 24/7 Olympic Athletes Hub, dozens of smartphone apps that track everything from the progress of the Olympic torch to the location of toilets in the host city, and the London Eye alight with a rainbow of colors that correspond to Twitter sentiment about the Games.

Beyond first, second, or third: London 2012 by the numbers

Here are a few quick numbers to frame the first weekend and prep you for the rest of London 2012:
4x -- That's how much stronger the network capacity in London is compared to Beijing when it hosted the '08 games. But on July 29 data networks were becoming overloaded and it impacted TV coverage for certain events.

So far, even the Olympics can’t budge our outdated TV models

[Commentary] Once again, NBC is irritating the heck out of millions of Americans by messing around with the Olympics. Once again, the decision to show the opening ceremony in prime time via a time delay has resulted in people accusing NBC of “not getting it,” and of thinking “it’s 1992.” Once again, the decision to edit the games has some sports fans irked about cuts NBC made in the opening ceremony. And once again, U.S. consumers don’t get it.

Sure, people are frustrated because they can’t easily stream the Olympics online without a cable subscription, and there will always be sports fans who don’t want the edited version of The Games with the life stories on athletes and dramatic cuts. But frankly, for now, NBC doesn’t really care what those people want. NBC paid $1.18 billion for the right to broadcast the Olympics and it will be a cold day in hell before it dilutes the amount it can charge advertisers or the value it has to cable providers. In many ways, even though NBC depends on huge audiences to justify the rates it’s charging advertisers, it can afford to alienate some of them.

Obama Campaign Pays Lower Olympic Rates Than RNC

At least on one level, Democrats seem to be making out better than Republicans with NBC’s Olympic coverage. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is paying 33% more for a prime-time spot than the Obama campaign. The RNC plans to air three 30-second ads at $451,000 each during NBC’s prime-time coverage. The Obama campaign, which is running 15 ads, has locked in its price at $340,200 a spot. The RNC last week inked a $2.6 million national Olympic buy, where it is paying higher rates than Obama across the board, according to an NBCUniversal political file. NBC does not comment on specifics of its deals. But the network is likely taking a cue from an FCC statute, which entitles a candidate to pay a comparable rate to general advertisers. For the most part, national political committees are not entitled to that benefit and a network does not face limits in what it can charge them. Using estimates, both the Obama campaign and the RNC appear to be receiving a good discount compared to the general market, with President Obama paying about half that going rate and the RNC about 60% as much. President Obama is spending more than double the RNC for all its national time during the London Games, with a $6 million buy.

FTC OK With Disney Purchase of NBCU's A+E Stake

The Federal Trade Commission signaled it has no antitrust issues with Disney's $3 billion purchase of NBCU's 15% stake in A+E. The FTC has terminated its Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust review of the deal and plans no action to block or modify the deal.

Google's Apology for Not Deleting Street View Data Isn't Enough

Google has apologized for keeping user data it said it destroyed, but that hasn't placated its critics.

Steve Eckersley, the head of enforcement for the United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office, said, "this should never have happened in the first place and the company’s failure to secure its deletion as promised is cause for concern." Ireland's deputy commissioner for data protection, Gary Davis, said the same thing, but more harshly, calling Google's oversight "clearly unacceptable" while expressing "deep unhappiness." But more importantly, this misstep gives the ICO an opportunity to reexamine the data, which could make Google look worse, revealing the nature of the personal information Google collected.

The unspoken truth about Apple

Apple has created a brand identity that, seemingly, no other company in the technology industry can match. And although the company's reputation is partly derived from its former charismatic leader, Steve Jobs, and a loyal fan base has always propped the iPhone maker up, Apple's products have become synonymous with high-quality, high-end devices that ooze high-tech "cool." But is that really warranted?

Is Apple really the company that delivers the highest of the high-end? Not a chance. Informed consumers know that they can buy cheaper products from Apple's competitors and get more powerful components, but the intangibles keep them coming back for iPhones and Macs. Apple's products look nicer, the company's store experience is more streamlined, and it's just "cooler" to be an Apple customer. One of the reasons many in the tech and design industries revere Jobs, of course, was his ability to know what to leave out of a product -- as much as what to put in, be it the most high-end or not. So, maybe Apple doesn't need to be "high-end." Clearly, just being Apple is working out.

Benton

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