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From the Guardian:
Discovery has paid $1.45 billion for the European (excluding Russia) rights to the Olympic Games starting in 2018, bumping off national broadcasters including the BBC, which have long held them. It's a major coup for the U.S. broadcaster as it looks to take a bigger part of the foreign TV market.
The Discovery chief executive, David Zaslav, told the Guardian that it would negotiate with the BBC and other broadcasters in the UK, France and Germany over potentially sub-licensing some of the rights.
"Part of our approach will be to strive to work with some of the best Olympic broadcast players. The BBC will have the chance to sub-licence some of the rights. We'll open up those discussions in every market," he said.
This sizable deal builds on a $7.5 billion no-bid contract signed last year by the US based NBC to broadcast the Olympics through 2032 in the United States.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:44AM
I cannot stand - hate - absolutely detest - the television coverage of the Olympics. They only show the most popular sports, often the coverage is so chopped up that you often can't really follow any single event, most of the actual broadcast time is wasted on crappily done background stories, and, and... The last summer Olympics it was so bad that I watched almost nothing.
Add to that the following revelation: A few weeks ago I was watching a sporting event, and they had a technical glitch: you could hear the event, but the commentators were gone. What a relief! You actually felt like you were in the stadium, because you could hear the event, and the endless, pointless nattering was gone. Wow!
So. This is the Internet age. Why don't they just put all of the events on the Internet, both as live-stream and as podcasts? The cameras are there already, so it would cost them almost nothing to put put the footage online, and let people watch whatever they want. If they just have to produce all the feel-good background stories, they can put those online and see how many people actually want to watch them. To collect their billions, they could charge some sort of subscription or membership fee, or pay-by-view.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:34AM
you could hear the event, but the commentators were gone. What a relief!
I used to follow american football, its probably the most interesting of the ball games, however the puddle is very shallow so I got bored of it. Anyway its not unheard of for people to mute the TV because the video commentators are pretty much morons designed to appeal to drunks in bars, and listen to the radio coverage while watching the TV. The radio guys pretend to appeal to car drivers who optimistically are not drunk, so instead of spending most of their time hooting like monkeys they actually talk about the game is a clear and concise manner.
see how many people actually want to watch them
They're filler. They mean they wanted to sell a beer commercial but couldn't get the dough, so now you have to sit thru 60 seconds of idiocy. They have to put something in there.
A lot of it is short attention span production issues. I remember seeing some games in the 80s where there might be 5-10 seconds of just listening to the fans cheer, kind of like a shitcom laugh track. That is gone now, unless some idiot is talking hes not earning his millions. There are aspects of dysfunctional corporation in that, too. Another production issue thats pretty annoying is video game style animation, something shiny and bright has to be animated and moving continuously, which makes it super annoying to watch.
Someday, someone with a vast array of FPGAs is going to make what amounts to ad block for TV that doesn't just eat commercials as a batch process like mythtv does, but eats animations and stupid stuff like that in real time.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:22PM
But in today's digital time, that gives you the risk of the radio commentator "predicting" the game because the TV delay is larger than the radio delay.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:23PM
Even in the "olden days" you'd run into issues with satellite delays if the TV went half way across the country over a satellite and back thats nearly a second but the radio for in state local games was a microwave link.
Anyway worst case it felt like a newscast. Live you'd see the ball get handed to somebody then hear "handed to #63" but this way you'd hear "handed to 63" while it was being handed to 63 which was OK. Far better than listening to the TV sportscasters who think grunting is top quality news reporting, anyway.
The most disconcerting part was the cheering. Crowd does wild means he caught it while you're seeing the ball maybe 10 feet still in the air. Dead silence means he dropped it. Dead silence after the play means in a fraction of a second you're about to see a ref throw a flag.
(Score: 2) by skater on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:40PM
A couple years back I caught a rebroadcast of an old Ohio State-Michigan football game. I don't know who the play-by-play guy was, but the color guy was another college football coach. It was awesome to watch - they didn't talk too much, they just let the plays develop, and they said a few things about it as needed, then shut up again. (I do like having the score, clock, etc. on the screen all the time, though. It was weird waiting for a commercial break to see the score.)
Years ago, I came across an old MAD Magazine that had a send-up of in-depth football coverage. For a while I didn't get the joke - of course they have sideline reporters and people reporting on the weather and so on... then I realized that I wasn't getting the joke because TV coverage of the game wasn't always that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:20PM
In my opinion, radio announcers in general are better than their TV counterparts because they have to describe the game. TV announcers add comments to the action while radio announcers have to describe the action. I used to regularly turn down the TV and turn up the radio whenever possible. The best sports announcers ever are the ones who were in, or came up through radio.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by scruffybeard on Tuesday June 30 2015, @11:45AM
I am with you. If you are not into gymnastics or ice skating, you can forget about any comprehensive coverage, especially if your home country is knocked out in an early round. I don't understand why they don't break the licensing up into smaller pieces. Forgetting internet streaming for the moment, with all the various cable channels available, I would think that some of the minor channels would jump at the opportunity to cover the equestrian or shooting sports events that see almost no air time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:56PM
When the digital terrestrial HD channels started and people didn't really watch them yet, the first olympics (2000?) were available on them very lightly edited and often live.
Used to hang out at a friend's place to watch them, because it was already unbearable to try to watch NBC's "ad-USA-ad-ad-ad-USA-ad-ad" delayed evening broadcast.
Does the average Joe realize that there are lots of events they never get to see because the broadcaster hasn't found a "look at our sponsored champion" angle?
(Score: 1) by sparky on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:56PM
The NFL tried this [go.com] in the '80s.
As Bryant Gumbel put it, "[it was] greeted with almost every kind of reaction, from good-natured humor to applause to some surprising anger."
Also, with Dolby 5.1, you should be able to shut up the commentators by switching off your center channel.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:38PM
Its an American thing to ruin a simple sports broadcast.
I read your link and flashed back to Japanese torrents of the original Unbeatable Banzuke TV show, like a decade ago. Compare it with the USA American Ninja Warrior and they crap it all up with 3 minutes of commercials for old people prescriptions, 2 minute mini-docudramas about some losers difficult home life (I'm tired of being told to give a F), 5 seconds of him falling off the course repeated three times, then back to commercials and repeat till the end of the show, all with continuous seasickness and nausea inducing animations. Japanese style sports coverage is about a million times cooler and more interesting and enjoyable to watch.
Its a narrowcasting thing. That 1% of the population who likes shit, really likes shitty hyper optimized for that 1% TV. Of course the other 99% of the population absolutely can't stand it. The Japanese version only weakly appeals to about 20% of the population. My whole family including parents watched Sasuke with me. I don't remember why it got cancelled, I think someone in Japan got killed on the course, but possibly only weakly appealing to 20% of the population vs 1% of the population being crazy fans might have something to do with it.
I wonder if Japanese olympics coverage is superior to the USA version and if so how I could get access. I'm a pretty creative guy so I can probably figure out how to illegally watch Japanese sports coverage if I want.
Probably a better comparison to shitty "american ninja warrior" is torrents of original Japanese "Sasuke". I can barely understand what they're saying on a good day with my awesome one semester of Japanese language and still the .jp version kicks the butt of the .us coverage. I'm tempted to go look for some downloads right now.... I haven't watched Sasuke in like 5 years.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @08:39PM
My whole family including parents watched Sasuke with me. I don't remember why it got cancelled, I think someone in Japan got killed on the course
I am searching now and that was Unbeatable Banzuke that got cancelled. Sasuke is still on. And I think I'm going to "obtain" some copies of last season.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:17PM
You have made my wife and my night. Back in 2011 the producers of the show went bankrupt, and then American Ninja Warrior came out, and we thought that was the end of that. I don't really care for the American version as they don't treat it like the gauntlet run it should be. But seeing that after they went bankrupt their parent company picked them up and has been producing new matches yearly!!! WOOT! The next one appears to be airing tomorrow!
Awesome sauce!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 30 2015, @09:52PM
If you find a legal way to watch in .us at a sane price, post details. I'm willing to pay the $15 the inferior americanized version wants per season on amazon instant video, but I'd be willing to pay a bit more for the "genuine" .jp version. I would not be interested in ordering an imported DVD box set from 7 years ago costing $200 plus shipping or whatever. If I can't find a legal way to get recent content at a sane price, well, those problems do have (illegal) solutions, and I suspect I'll have no serious difficulty watching the new season. Perhaps there is some semi-obscure streaming service that offers it very quietly that I haven't discovered. Come on media companies, stop pissing me off, I've got fat stacks of cash and I hear you like money...
I've been thinking of going FTA free to air satellite for, oh, I donno 20 years now. So all I need is an excuse. Unfortunately NHK is C band so I'd need a rather large dish and I donno if they distribute Sasuke on NHK satellite feed anyway. So I strike out again, AFAIK FTA satellite isn't gonna do it. I have a bad habit of curiosity and about 10 times I've almost pulled the trigger and set up a FTA system but I never quite do it. I'd have to figure out how to integrate it with mythtv and schedulesdirect etc etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @10:14PM
> So. This is the Internet age. Why don't they just put all of the events on the Internet, both as live-stream and as podcasts?
Probably because of what they charge for using the broadcasting rights in that way.