Media Monster

NBC’s Decision Not To Live Stream Opening Ceremonies Ensures Torrent Of Pirating

So, the 2012 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremonies are getting underway as you read this. Better get to the nearest TV and check them out, right? THINK AGAIN. NBC’s showing them, but not until 7:30 tonight – i.e. more than three hours after they’ve started on the East Coast, and over six hours after they start out West. And not only that, NBC isn’t even live streaming the event online. Many aren’t happy about this – and they shouldn’t be – but that’s the situation.

So what’s a person who wants to see the ceremonies as they happen to do? Well, if you’ve got easy access to BBC One on your TV, you’re in luck – they’re showing the ceremonies live, since in England, they’re actually happening in prime time. But of course, not everyone can. And if you try to watch an official BBC stream online in the U.S., you get this. Essentially, U.S. viewers have been put in a needless bind by NBC’s backwards decision to shield our eyes from the ceremonies until they deem us good and ready. The criticism coming their way is justified.

And it’s going to inevitably lead to people watching illegal streams instead and combing stories like this for ideas of which sites they can visit to do it. You know the sites – the sites that always get mentioned in stories about people illegally streaming big sporting events (and the Department of Justice’s attempts to combat that illegal streaming). It won’t be legal, but it will be easy – it always is.

And so plenty of people who would have driven boatloads of traffic to various NBC online properties – and may very well have still watched the ceremonies, or part of them, on TV later – will instead be content to visit one of the usual streaming suspects and watch the ceremonies that way. All because NBC, despite making big progress in streaming the actual sporting events live this year, had to find another way to prove that they still don’t quite get it.

Getty photo, by Paul Gilham

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