Television audience defrauded! American sports fans waited in vain yesterday morning for live coverage from Peking.
The television network NBC carried the Olympic games opening ceremonies in a canned delayed broadcast. The goal: higher viewer numbers.
NBC shelled out 588 million Euros (894 million dollars) for the exclusive U.S. rights to broadcast the Olympics. They never missed a chance to talk up the opening ceremonies, even on their breakfast TV programs.
Their competition, on the other hand, switched to their reporters in Peking, but naturally couldn’t show any live pictures. Instead, the reporters were asked to give the audience their impressions of the spectacle in narrative form.
In the meantime, video clips of the opening ceremony showed up on the Internet portal YouTube, but were quickly removed, apparently after NBC intervened.
Americans were hopping mad and vented their anger via various online forums.
A few cable customers were able to watch the live broadcast if they received the Canadian CBC network.
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