An Open Letter to NBC

 

Dear NBC:

I already know that historically, you don’t care a lot about me and a few million of your other viewers who have the misfortune to live here on the West (left) coast.   We rarely get our network news live from you, and when it comes to sporting events, unless it is a Saturday or Sunday, pretty much everything you give us is three hours old.  Yes, we do see that “LIVE, ET” thing that you throw up in the upper right hand corner of the screen.  Meaning, “LIVE” for your viewers in the Eastern Time zone, “SCREW YOU BECAUSE YOU ALREADY SAW THE RESULTS ONLINE” to your viewers in the West (like tonight, watching the time delayed Olympics qualifying from Omaha and San Jose … old news for us in the West).

So, here is a chance for redemption.  During the London Olympics, give us stuff at the same time those on the East coast see it.   I know you want to have the big drama building extravaganza for prime time viewers on the main network, and that’s fine, you can still do that.  But when the events you are showing in prime time for the West coast are so old they have been Tweeted, Facebooked, and posted on every news website online hours before they are broadcast here, it is kind of insulting.

You’ve got the NBC Sports Channel, you’ve got MSNBC, you’ve got  CNBC (yeah, I know, you don’t want to interrupt the stock ticker), so why don’t you show the events live as they happen for all of us to see on those cable channels if you don't want to interrupt regular programming on the main network?  Then, during prime time on the network, wrap it all up in a pretty little package with Bob Costas and the other “NBC Olympics Stars” and redo it all then.  It will be perfect for those who couldn’t see it during the day, and perfect for us West coasters who want to relive the thrill of what happened hours earlier, even if we already saw it.

You know that 52 years ago when CBS carried the 1960 Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley, it was so amazing that even if it was broadcast two days later, it was cool.  But hey, this is 2012.  We have IPhones and we have IPads that give results as they happen. We have bootleg websites from third world countries that stream the Olympics live as they happen and satellite dishes from CTV in Canada that broadcast it live (they realize when sports is happening live, it is an event to be shared then, not on a three hour tape delay).

So step up NBC.  Give it to us live.  We can take it.  But what we can’t take is another Olympics where Bob Costas and the other announcers are overly excited about an important matchup … that took place three hours before we are seeing it.

Thanks for your consideration.

Dan Adams

Palm Springs

PS: I’ll still keep watching KMIR.  The desert’s “trusted” news source.