Author: Isabelle Leichtman
It’s an event people of all ages around the world wait for every 4 years, the summer Olympic Games. This year the games began in London, England on Friday, July 27 with coverage by NBC in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast Corp.’s NBC Universal recorded that some 35.8 million viewers tuned into the first three nights of the Olympics. As NBC states, this past weekend had the most viewers of any opening weekend for the summer Olympics with 5 million more viewers than 2008’s games in Beijing, China. In addition, 11.4 million videos were watched on NBCOlympics.com this past Sunday (with this year being the first time NBC is streaming the games live on their website).
With all the benefits that come with live coverage, negatives come as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that many fans are complaining that there are spoilers not only all of over the internet, but also on social media. Many have gone to such extremes as avoiding the internet all together to prevent ruining their Olympics experience. If you want to enjoy the games in the evening sans spoilers, you don’t have to take such drastic measures but instead take small steps like steering clear of the sports sections of electronic news outlets or avoiding breaking news emails.
In addition, social media outlets have certain features that can aid in dodging any Olympic news before it airs on primetime. For instance, Twitter has seen a dramatic increase in use of Twitter Doghouse and TweetDeck. Twitter Doghouse allows users to “un-follow” certain feeds for a specific amount of time. For example, you can stop following certain athletes or breaking news feeds to avoid seeing any results that have already taken place. Similarly, TweetDeck allows users to delegate specific words that they want to ban from their feed. In this instance you could have TweetDeck filter “Olympics” or “medal”; or as one user interviewed by the WSJ did, filter specifics such as “London2012,” “Phelps,” and “Lochte.” On the flip side, many enjoy the live coverage and want access to real-time results. This is the first year that fans have the option of how they want to keep up with the Olympics, and we can realistically expect this trend to only continue in the information age.
Whether you’ve checked updates in between meetings or waited to see it all after a long day at work, this year’s games have already proven to be exciting and unpredictable. Here are some sources for live coverage and updates as well as the schedule of televised events on NBC so that you can keep up with 2012’s games whichever way you prefer!
