The Olympics this year were fantastic. As much fun to watch as any I remember (which, granted, starts somewhere between Barcelona and Atlanta).
NBC offered an unbelievable 'complete Olympics,' with 3600 hours of coverage between its multiple television channels and its website, nbcolympics.com.
TechCrunch called NBC's web strategy a failure. Despite having to download silverlight (which gave a great picture) and a difficult UI, I thought it was successful. It gave me video options on demand, which is nice for a very busy startup founder who can't follow Bejing time.
But.
But.
But.
What's wrong in the above picture?
Do no sports fans work at NBC??? What's the most important thing when watching a sporting event? Chips? Beer? Recliner? How about NOT KNOWING THE OUTCOME BEFORE WATCHING THE GAME.
Why....why....WHY did NBC tell me the outcome of the game/event/race/Michael Phelps spectacular that I was watching???? WHY?
They probably lost 20+ hours of my viewing time (which my company benefited from) because...well...it's much less fun to watch an event you know the outcome of.
I missed the basketball final. I would have watched it. But no. Even though it's midway through the first quarter....the video player finds it important to tell me that "US survives to beat Spain for Gold" and then scrolls: Watch the NBC replay of the United States battling, but then hanging on to claim the gold medal vs Spain.
I WAS ALREADY WATCHING!!!! This actually ruined the greatest moment of the Olympics (thanks Jason Lezak) for my girlfriend because...well...as she was watching that amazing finale the outcome was scrolling on top of the screen. Lezak's amazing finish was a lot less exciting when you saw the result during the first leg of the relay.
It would have been so simple. Go to NBCOlympics.com. There's a welcome screen. It says 'Don't show me any results' or 'Show me results' and then you click one of the two options. Then it goes to identical screens, the scores are just removed if you click the first option. Seems so simple, and would have gotten a LOT more pageviews from me.
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