Olympics Web Video & The Long Tail

Rafat’s (paidContent) disappointed with the upcoming Olympics web video, labeling NBC “totalitarian” and heavy handed – his major beefs seem to be that televised content will only be available online post TV broadcast and only viewable at NBCOlympics.com. As I commented Sunday, I’m pleased with any/all online viewing options – especially being able to catch the “long tail” sports and qualifying rounds:

Live doesn’t matter to me – I don’t even know what the time difference is and I don’t want to worry about remembering the schedules. However, I’m looking forward to being able to access lower profile sports (that interest me) like judo and freestyle wrestling that get very little or random, hard to find air-time.

In taking the screengrab above, I tried out the (Mac-compatible!) Silverlight player… and had better luck streaming via Safari than with Firefox 3 (which served up blank screens and stuttering video). Yet to be seen is if NBC can handle the traffic and how their site will organize and present video.

Random factoid: One of my first online purchases was an Olympics wrestling t-shirt during the ’96 Atlanta games.

2 thoughts on “Olympics Web Video & The Long Tail”

  1. this is great for me. i’m a former track cyclist and theres never TV coverage. i know about 5 people going to beijing and 2 of them i road with while at penn state. thanks for the tip!

  2. Yep, I think there’s a large untapped market for folks like us who participated in these sports that don’t get a lot of mainstream coverage.

    (All the Olympians I’ve wrestled with -and had my butt kicked by- are retired from competition. Getting old!)

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