Olymic Coverage

When worlds collide...  As the Summer Olympics 2012 are wrapping up I’m a bid sad, as I missed the entire thing and for several reasons.  Most importantly, I had better things to do – like get myself out of the house and enjoy the Swiss Alps and do some moving around myself.  Secondly: I was abroad and had no TV where I stay and thirdly, it never occurred to me that the first and second reason would prevent me from seeing highlights;  I had planned on watching what interested me virally, but apparently I got stuck somewhere between TV monopoly (anybody say NBC?), the Organizing Committee of the Olympic games and 2005. Seriously?

So here we are, 2012 and YouTube has been around for, say, seven years and we’ve (or at least I have) heard a lot about that nifty synergy where videos go viral and then garner more hits (as in clicks on the web) and more interest and move traffic to the source of the video.  Sound familiar?  Well, maybe to you, but not the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games, NBC nor any other TV station that paid a g’zillion to secure exclusive broadcast rights.  

What on earth was NBC thinking when they delayed broadcasting the day’s events to the evening prime time slot when the games where in London, five hours ahead of the East Coast?  Did they seriously think they could control the internet and social media?  Why not go live AND show the highlights in the evening?

Did the OCO think they could control Social Media without consequences?  They sure tried hard for the past two weeks.  What happened to our 1^st Amendment?

The OCO is taking down all YouTube video of the current games and has threatened sanctions against athletes who tweet and mention their sponsors. See this guest post on the Brian Solis blog by Eric Schwartzman. It sums up the Olympic social media fiasco beautifully. 

And go on YouTube and search ‘Olympics 2012’ and click on say, synchronized swimming. I did and for a moment I was wondering why the swim suits were a tad old fashioned, but guess what, the clip is from 1984. Click on any other video of the 2012 Olympic Games:  NONE are from the current games. 

The OCO had a great opportunity to show the world how traditional and social media can play hand in hand and benefit from one another and share synergies and allow for a singular situation where the context is perfect to create and SHARE amazing media moment after media moment.  They failed miserably; going Orwellian on us instead à la 1984 and showing us the ugly side of “Big Brother is Watching You”.

Good bye London, no tears shed as I’m clueless as to what happened and hello Rio de Janeiro 2016 – please get it right.