NBC announced today that it will be broadcasting all events live across all time zones in the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang County, South Korea.
For recent Olympics, NBC broadcasted all events through official online streams, but stubbornly insisted on tape delays for televised broadcasts of the games. For example, NBC chose to save popular events, competitions with big-name athletes, and even the opening ceremonies (which were last seen live in the US in 1996!) for more lucrative prime-time television slots, even when the actual event had taken place hours beforehand.
That policy has come under fire as the proliferation of the internet and social media has made it possible for both results and even live streams of the tape delayed events themselves to make their way across the world before they aired on NBC and its subsidiary networks. The recent 2016 Olympics in Rio suffered the worst ratings of any of NBC’s recent broadcasts of the games — after all, why watch on NBC when the results are streamed online hours in advance?
The XXIII Winter Olympic Games kick off February 9th, 2018 in PyeongChang.
