"A quick disclaimer before we get to the take: The Milan Winter Olympics have been a godsend. It's the dead of February, there's no more football on, and every news story coming out of Washington makes me want to take a swan dive off the Golden Gate Bridge. So thank God that you and I have been blessed with two weeks of profoundly exciting winter events (plus cross-country skiing), all set behind the best scenery porn that any live event could possibly offer."
"Because while NBC's aesthetic presentation of these Games has been exquisite, its technical presentation has been a complete pain in the ass. More than 30 years after NBC staged a disastrous attempt to sell its expanded Olympics Triplecast on pay-per-view, the network finally sorted out a way to get Americans to shell out extra money for something they used to watch for free. The key was spreading its coverage out across sister networks like USA and then putting ALL of the events over on Peacock."
"You know Peacock. It's the G League streamer. You only subscribe to Peacock if you REALLY have to. But compared with the pay-per-view charges NBC demanded for the Summer Games back in 1992, it's a relatively cheap price for watching the Olympics how you want, when you want. And the Peacock interface is set up to deliver, with every winter event getting its own menu button, plus a LIVE graphic if that event is happening in real time."
NBC pairs outstanding visual presentation of the Milan Winter Olympics with a problematic technical and distribution strategy. The network moved much of live coverage onto Peacock and sister channels, creating a paywalled, fragmented viewing environment that forces viewers to pay for content that was once free. Peacock presents promising features like individual event menu buttons and LIVE indicators, but intrusive pre-roll ads and a perceived inferior streamer reputation undermine the experience. The approach echoes past pay-per-view missteps while extracting additional fees from viewers who expect seamless, ad-respectful access to live Olympic events.
Read at SFGATE
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