I have been very impressed with the access that NBC is providing to the Olympics. It feels like, finally, the decades-old dream of access to all the events, whenever I want, on whatever terms I want, has been delivered. It has been a pleasure to get to see some great, highly popular sports like gymnastics, swimming, and the big track and field events. It has been even better to be able to easily access fun events that don’t make it to primetime like women’s table tennis, archery and beach volleyball through the mobile and Apple TV apps and NBCOlympics.com.
At the same time, a mix of Facebook Live videos from athletes, Snapchat and Instagram stories is giving me a constant bath of b-roll and highlight clips and putting the Olympics everywhere around me.
The problem is, however, that at least in my view, the result of total access is that the Olympics has never been so boring.
Now that I have the access to everything that I asked for, I want to give it all back and just get my evening hours constrained and edited. I want to bring produced programming back.
There are three side effects to total access that I think are dampening my Olympic experience. First, it becomes clear that there is just way too much Olympics by volume and way too many boring moments overall. It turns out that most of the events are pretty boring most of the time to the average viewer. Now that my wife made me watch a full women’s gymnastics event, I realize I only want edited highlights. I don’t need to watch the women’s archery quarterfinals ever again. Mo Farah’s 10K run had a few moments of drama, but was not worth 27 minutes. The average quality of a Michael Phelps live session on Facebook is snooze worthy. Condensed Snapchat and Instagram story moments are far too brief to build any drama or meaningful investment by me as a viewer. Overall, more access to the events means my average exposure to the events is lower quality and less engaging.
Second, the average production quality is frankly lower when resources are spread more broadly. When the Olympics was mostly constrained to highly produced linear TV sessions, the stories developed around each highlighted athlete and contest were rich and engaging. There was real storytelling. This Olympics, the focus has been broadly on gymnast Simone Biles and Phelps, both of whom are good stories. But on average, without serious editing, background stories and more, I can’t get as excited about all of the athletes now occupying part of the overall Olympic story. The commentators on the average event feed aren’t interesting or engaging enough, and they clearly don’t have enough preparation and research support around them. There are too many underdeveloped plot lines.
Where’s the Water Cooler?
Third, it feels like there is little community discussion happening because everyone is watching different stuff at different times. A few of my friends have noted how strange it is to see so little organic posting about the Olympics from the people they know. I am sure it is because, where once the Olympics, like the Super Bowl, was something we all experienced together, it is now something we mostly experience on our own time and in our own way. The fact that you can’t guarantee that most—or even many—people have watched the same thing at mostly the same time makes it hard to get excited about the action with others. There is no Olympic water cooler.
The exception in all of this might be the New York Times. With its constrained canvas of published articles and limited reporting resources, I am finding the publication's in-depth look at sports and athletes and their interactive work wonderful. I would argue that the limited canvas they are working with makes their average coverage much better than the rest.
As an idea, I find the Olympics and Olympic athletes incredibly personally inspiring. I love the dedication, the grit, the stories of triumph and failure. I am one of those people who choke up a bit even just watching athletes from so many different countries parade into the opening ceremony. I have to imagine that overall this Olympics will be extremely successful from a viewership perspective.
At the same time, it is putting in stark relief the problem we face as everything is available all the time. Just like CNN’s 24-hour news cycle made the evening news less interesting, and total political content access makes the average election article completely inane, total access to the Olympics is making the Olympics less interesting as a viewer.
For example, earlier this week, rather than watch another swim race, I decided to watch the latest episode of “The Night Of” on HBO. Ultimately I opted for a professionally edited story over the unedited drama of sports.
This is a lesson all media companies should bear in mind. As technology makes it evermore possible to distribute everything everywhere, sometimes less is still more.