Fans furious after NBC completely botches USA's first gold of 2018
NBC/Universal has done it again, taking what should’ve been a glorious moment for Americans of all stripes to come together in national pride and ruining it by botching the TV broadcast.
Snowboarder Red Gerard won the first medal of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics for the United States, taking gold in men’s slopestyle snowboarding.
HE’S GOLDEN! @RedmondGerard wins the men's #snowboard slopestyle event with an 87.16 to give #TeamUSA its first medal in PyeongChang!!! 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ajq7Vdf7Rx
— Team USA (@TeamUSA) February 11, 2018
What’s more, he had to pull off a miraculous rally to win. Gerard was 11th after the first two runs before nailing the third in masterful style, a feat all the more impressive considering he’s just 17 years old.
But NBC spoiled it, showing it on social media before it aired on the primetime television broadcast. That’s because NBC, in 2018, still airs Olympic events on tape delay in a packaged, spoon-feed-the-audience sports-entertainment format, treating the quadrennial spectacle more like a heavily-edited reality TV show than like actual sports.
The comments section of NBC Sports’ Facebook page was savage in its disdain for the network’s transgression.
One commenter pointed out, “Spoiler alert. Literally watching this on TV and haven’t gotten to this…”
Another asked what should probably be considered an obvious question.
“Maybe people shouldn’t be checking social media if they don’t want to know results … it was on online …w hy do we have to wait to be happy??”
And yet another called out NBC for, on a broadcast that’s American-centric by nature, missing out on the whole bringing-Americans-together bit.
“Hey NBC, USA just won its first Gold and you aren’t going to show the National Anthem or an amazing 17-year-old athlete on the podium?”
Yeah, NBC. What gives? There aren’t any football players kneeling so it’s not worth showing?
And, of course, leave it to the commentors to say what everyone was thinking.
“NBC has become the friend you refuse to watch movies with,” one person wrote. “They talk too much and spoil the best parts.”
NBC is infamous for this and has been since they got the Games in their sports-rights lineup in 1988 for the Summer Olympics and 2002 for the winter version.
But their not the first to be guilty of the offense. The memorable U.S. hockey team’s win over the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics was aired on tape delay by ABC — even though the game was held in Lake Placid, New York — meaning some media outlets broadcast the result of the historic upset before it aired on national TV.
Imagine if ESPN were airing Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals on tape-delay and posting, “LeBron with the triple-double! What a moment for Cleveland!” while the game was in progress on TV.
There’s really only one solution — when the Olympics are time zones ahead, stay off social media and turn off your push notifications.
Considering what NBC does with its tape-delay, that’d be just as true if the Games were held in Red Gerard’s backyard in Cleveland.
Fans will probably have plenty of infuriating moments left in them before the Games are done. NBC has been pulling this stunt for years and isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.
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