London 2012: Are You Being Spoiled? - Joe Chacon's Blog

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Joe Chacon's Blog

London 2012: Are You Being Spoiled? Stuck

Posted on August 1, 2012 at 02:07 AM.

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Yesterday's column on what I considered to be a ridiculous rule in Women's Gymnastics that kept Jordyn Wieber out of the all-around finals created a great debate amongst the OS community.

While many sided with me, there were also a substantial amount of readers who sided with the rule in large part because it was the Americans who pushed for the rule to begin with. It was a respectful exchange between both sides.

As our Olympic Coverage continues I wanted to get a feel for how you are watching the games and obtaining the results.

For myself, I am doing as much as I can to stay away from the results during the day. Being on the west coast, by the time NBC's Prime Time package is shown (8:00 PM to midnight) it has already been shown throughout the country. Basically I am watching a replay of the replays.

Like many of you I am chained to a desk from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Watching the games live is not an option for me. However, it feels like another full-time job to simply stay away from the results.

While the Olympics take place I don't check my Twitter or Facebook feeds, nor do I visit any sports related sites because I know if something big happened during the day it would be plastered on the front page.

I don't know how many of you are going through the same efforts to watch the games at night without knowing the results before hand, but is this the way it has to be?

NBC thinks so, and their ratings suggest people are happy with the way things are. Monday's prime time ratings confirmed that 20% of all households in the US were tuned in to the network. Although it wasn't a record for the Games, it wasn't far off either.

I applaud NBC for broadcasting every event live online which can be viewed if you login with your current cable/satellite provider credentials. However, they should also include an option to hide the results.

For example, on Monday my DVR didn't record the final set of Sean Rosenthal/Jake Gibb's beach volleyball match against Poland. I went online to watch the replay but the link to watch it was two inches away from the result of the match that showed they had lost.

If I were asked what I would like to see from NBC, I would suggest they broadcast the events live throughout the day on their wide array of broadcast channels regardless of what time they are on. Then, in addition to that, use their prime time slot to replay the day's best action. At the very least they should remove the west coast delay so that the entire country is watching it at the same time.

My other suggestion would be to create a spoiler free website in which viewers can go watch a replay of an event without having to cover their eyes in an attempt to avoid seeing a result.

Perhaps I'm in the minority and most people don't care about seeing the result before watching the actual event. For me I want to watch a race and feel the excitement as if I'm watching it live. In order for that to happen I have to live my life like it is 1998 again. You know, when the internet was just gaining popularity and cell phones were a luxury.

It's 11:00 PM out here on the west coast and I still haven't found out who won the Women's Team Gymnastics medals. I will, however, sit here and watch with anticipation.

How are you watching the Summer Olympics? Are you staying away from the results during the day so you can enjoy the "live broadcast feel" at night? Or do you like to know who won as soon as possible from various web sources?

Joe Chacon is a Staff Writer for Operation Sports and a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeChacon.

Comments

# 1 THE YAMA @ Aug 1

I'm recording them everyday, including our primetime showing at 8PM EST.

# 2 gigadkc @ Aug 2

tbh I don't care about most events, so I just check the internet for the latest results.

I could watch it at work (I'm the boss you know

) but it seems like the Olympics have lost some of it's appeal, most people I know care much less about it now then say 20 years ago. TV ratings are at an all-time low over here too, so it seems like a lot of people feel that way. Olympics were fun during the days when you didn't know about all the dopers, now it's just a big freak show. You're almost surprised when there aren't like 10 new world records every day you know.