The failed media consumer: How #NBC does not consider the Olympic audience #NBCfail

First, NBC did a horrible job on not streaming a live version of the Olympic opening ceremonies. What did America get? A bad version of British History one could find on Wikipedia, oh no, wait, Wikipedia might actually have been a better information resource for Matt and Meredith as they tried to comment on the opening ceremonies.

I had to sit through the “dumbing down” of who J.K. Rowling was, the British Industrial Revolution, and the TOO much talking parade of nations commentary.

I thought Matt dumbed it down too much when he told us that the British call soccer football instead of soccer, especially since soccer is becoming a more popular world sport. Additionally, I found the broadcast unprofessional and unpolished when Matt said the Queen was cheering wildly as the director chose to show Queen Elizabeth looking bored and tired. It was a taped event, I’m sure they could have “edited” that out.

I thought I was being too picky until I saw everyone else’s tweets and the new Twitter feed pop up called @Vieraandlauer during the opening ceremonies. One of my favorite tweets from the Viera and Lauer commentary is this one:

Yes, it was really that bad.

Then I noticed the new hashtag called #NBCfail. NBC didn’t like one reporter’s criticism and had him banned from Twitter. Click here for the story.

Not only is NBC doing a poor job at doing their job, but they influenced the utlitmate free speech venue, Twitter, to silence a critic by asking them to suspend the journalist’s account on a technicality. I am sure Twitter knows they bent the rules for a media conglomerate who they know just wanted to silence a critic who urged the failed audience to take action. How dare we, the people, express our opinions on how we receive information. Supposedly, NBC does NOT consider us consumers.

But, as NBC is delaying the content of the Olympics, they continue to fail us on their web site. For a network who wants us to watch their primetime coverage of the medal events, why does NBCnews.com continue to post the winners on their front page? Like this:

I suppose the #NBCfail  is why ABCnews.com is catching up in the morning news ratings wars. ABC does not spoil our fun. They have a separate link for Olympic coverage for people who want to know now. The stories they do have on their front page are not spoilers. But, at least, when I visit the web site without knowing the results of an anticipated event, it’s not on the front page. I can read the news. Hmmm… looks like ABCnews.com is listening to the audience.

Silencing a journalist because he tweeted a public email of an NBC executive exacerbated the Tweets about NBC and how they are really failing at providing instant coverage of the games. I would have hoped Twitter would look at the content of the Tweets and make the journalist either delete the tweet or hand out a warning. But, to suspend the account? Seems too harsh.

We are all navigating the etiquette of the social media Olympics. Overall, NBC brought MORE negative attention to themselves and they can thank Twitter for helping them attract more negative criticism.