Slashdot Mirror
Did NBC Alter the Olympics' Opening Ceremony?
techmuse writes "Viewing the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony online at NBC's Olympics website, you can see that the order in which the countries were presented was very different from the actual order of the countries in the ceremony, as listed at Wikipedia. NBC skipped roughly 100 countries ahead, then jumped back and forth, apparently delaying the appearance of the United States in its home market until later in the broadcast. (In fact, the US team was shown on the infield before they were shown marching!) NBC did not acknowledge this in its broadcast. Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
Movie at 11.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
If you had watched the whole broadcast you would know that they introduced the countries in the order of number of strokes in their Chinese name.
Excuse me, are you serious? It's television , FFS! They edit, it's normal. Been going on since at least the 1950s.
Caveat Utilitor
Last Post!!!!
Don't watch the Olympics, on NBC or any other outlet.
A TV company alter reality to suit their ratings/profits... they're too honest to do that.
[/sarcasm]
If you are not Windows or Mac, there is no web broadcast.
Gets me thinking, how did a Slashdoter view the web broadcast... Is someone using Windows?
to further nationalistic propaganda. All the medals won by Americans in the past were all actually made of tin. All the better to make hats with!
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
This has been a tradition in Olympic broadcasts for years. It's called editing.
Hi:
I thought only America was in the Olympics. When did they start letting other countries participate?
I looked yesterday for where I could watch Olypics videos. Looks like I needed to instal some plugin from Microsoft that only works with "approved" browsers. Silverlight?
I don't even mind if I'm bombarded with ads to see video. I would even pay for certain footage of one person I know competing in Beijing and some of the events. But a Microsoft player? No thanks.
Now I don't know whether to boycott the Olympic Games because of China ignoring human rights or because it was converted to a festival of commerce. If it goes on like this, I may be soon able to boycott each day of Olympics for a different reason.
my gay what?
Watergate, Iran-Contra, Abramoff, and now this.
To think this used to be a great country.
The Olympics aren't some sort of divine event which must only be related in reverent and unambiguously true tones. It's just another big money media event and the broadcasters have every right to try to maximize their dollars by editing it however they want - though if they start to edit it so the winners are different as shown than in the actual event, one would hope they have some sort disclosure statement for the broadcast.
i hate things my parents like!
blargh!
When it first appeared on the /. website this post contained much fail. Subsequent posts contained more. Did /. alter this post and reality?
... is that I have to actually subscribe to some local TV provider like AT&T, even if I don't own a TV, just so I could watch the NBC Olympics. There is no option for saying I don't have a TV service and to pay the sum they would receive from the local cable company directly to NBC. That is seriously outrageous.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
your gay and youe a newb your gay and youe a newb
Translation:
"Translate Server Error."
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
I'd Mod NBC +1 (Interesting)
I'd say the unending blather from NBC's hosts is at least as offensive as their reordering of events. We couldn't take their breathlessness during the opening ceremonies for more than 2 minutes at a stretch. Shut up already!
Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?"
<sarcasm>
Yes, they edited the live broadcast.
They simply warped the spacetime continuum to record the teams before they really made their entrance.
It's amazing what you can do with iMovie thesedays.
</sarcasm>
I just did a quick check of the recording of the live broadcast that I made. In every spot I checked, the order given on the Wikipedia pages matches the one in the broadcast. So, at least in the case of the broadcasted version, the ordering matches up.
The opening ceremony took place in the early morning hours of Friday for timezones in the USA. Beijing is 16 hours ahead of US Eastern Dayliight Time. Where I live the opening ceremony was broadcast on NBC over-the-air TV at 8:00am Saturday morning Beijing time. Hardly what I'd call live.
I'm not sure if NBC broadcast it live over the Internet - I was sleeping at that time since it was still 5am Friday morning where I am (Utah).
In contrast to that, the opening ceremony for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah was broadcast on NBC over-the-air TV live - so there was no editing, though during the introduction of countries, some of them were not shown due to commercial breaks. In that case, when the coverage resumed, it was mentioned that countries X, Y, and Z had been introduced during the commercial break, but they were not shown.
... do as the Chinese government does. We wouldn't want to see REALITY on TV, would we? It's so... passé (and often incongruous with how Big Brother / Our Corporate Overlords want us to think).
Oh my, oh my. You mean the TV companies alter reality for marketing purposes? I am shocked.
All those yellow lines that magically appear and disappear on the football fields?
All those "billboards" that are not really there on the stadium wall?
I bet those starlets are even where padded bras. Do you think that they might even have had surgery. Goodness gracious, I wonder if Barbara Walters uses botox?
And those wrestlers. Do you think that they might be using steroids?
I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Actually, the MSNBC online video let's you pick what you want to see and caries a lot of obscure sports from end to end. Much better than listening to Pierre Salinger babble on about wine tasting in all the French villages while you are waiting to see actual athletes.
Statesman
NBC has done an excellent job of insuring that Americans cannot watch the Olympics, the Opening Ceremony and other aspects of what is going on in China. They are the first to bitch and moan about China censorship and just look at what they're doing now! Typical media.
They don't have cable out here so watching anything on the Internet from NBC is just not possible. They have effectively censored millions of Americans from watching the Olympics.
What they do have has been cut up and altered to make room for all that advertising. And, just how many times do I have to hear "Ra Deem Team" from NBC. If I hear it again, I'm going to puke!
Now, there are plenty of NON-AMERICAN web sites with the streams and videos! China has some, Germany has one, and there are others. You get the point... AVOID NBC and you can watch for free!
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Guess, take a breath. Yes, NBC altered the video. They do the same thing when you see movies. They take your beloved movie and ALTER IT!!!!!! They do this to squish down time and show more things.
Now, before we freak out shit out and panic that they are hiding something from you, realize that this stuff is filmed by more cameras then you can even begin to contemplate AND is filled with people from all around the world to serve as witnesses. What does this mean? It is really frigging unlikely that NBC is hiding "the truth" from you. Far more likely, they are trying to shrink a 4+ hour opening ceremony into something that will better fit their schedule.
Worrying that they some how were altering the live feed is so dumb and inane that I can't even respond. People, take a frigging collective deep breath.
That ass hole. Did he want to know the time? What an ass. A cool president would just sit there looking all clam and collected and shit and not check the time. I bet that jerk also went to the bathroom to piss like a human.
Uh, I hate Bush like the other 90% of the world does too... but get a grip.
I usually hate to defend Bush, but I have to point out that he was probably suffering from an extreme case of jet lag at that point.
Check his watch and look terribly bored? Oh yeah, talk about editing. But I did sigh, as a leader should at least feign interest.
There was some incredible scenes to see but NBC camera people must have been told to zoom every camera and it diminished the quality IMO. The designers didn't create the imagery for moving viewers or moving cameras/lenses.
It really became an annoyance and a disappointment.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Dick Ebersole, who runs NBC Sports, is on record as saying that it is his goal to get better ratings, no matter what. That's why NBC doesn't post the running score of a football game, because they want you to stay and wait for it.
It's why they show all those personal profiles instead of sporting events. It's why they edited the opening games. It's why we can't see live events in the US.
"As Chinese is written in characters and not letters, the order of the teams' entry was determined by the number of strokes in the first character of their respective countries' Simplified Chinese names." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics_Opening_Ceremony#Parade_of_nations
1992 called. They want their George H.W. Bush debate footage back.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Who the fuck cares about the Olympics?
***We all point at you and shriek like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers***
Caveat Utilitor
I once photocopied a book, and then dropped all the pages, and when I picked them up they were in the wrong order.
No, but I did see him treat his American flag like a drumstick.
I watched NBC's broadcast on TV of the opening ceremonies and followed along with the Wikipedia list for a bit (at least, the Wikipedia list as it appeared last night) from Great Britain to the United States, and they matched perfectly. I've still got it on my DVR, and if someone can give an actual example of this reordering besides linking to the NBC olympics website (not even the opening ceremony video), I can check it out, but otherwise this objection is ridiculous. A little specificity would be helpful.
The order used was chinese alphabetical order I believe. Possibly they didn't think americans could handle them not being in english alphabetical order.
NBC actually cut out many parts of the opening ceremony including taking the olympic oath by the athletes. If you want the full broadcast, go find a torrent.
Seriously??? You think they changed the order in the live feed? How would they do that, with a time machine?
...unless:
A) NBC has some sort of time machine which allowed them to skip ahead into the future, tape events, and then go back in time and use that tape.
B) The live wasn't actually live, but had a serious 30+ minute delay, which would mean you could see things on the 'Net feed a half hour to an hour before you could see them on TV.
Why does it matter in the slightest? This isn't ZOMGFLAIMBATE, I'm honestly puzzled.
Oh, wait... Did Slashdot Alter the Discussion Ordering Ceremony?
What's really outrageous is that you're too stupid to understand that you just need to choose a random radio button. Any Radio Button. To get the exact same programming.
Or that you could even select the "Over the Air" option.
This is how the Commander-in-Chief behaves in front of the world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ_YhM4OGkU
Suggesting that NBC canjumped back and forth in a _live_ broadcast makes me wonder if there weren't a better use of their time machine.
I heard from a friend that the order in the opening ceremony was alphabetical based on a traditional form of Chinese. When translated to English the order was naturally different.
Am I surprised? NO.
Will this happen again? YES.
Will people stand up and say I will not allow and will not accept this alteration of events as they happened in the "real" world? Some will, most people will not give a damn.
NBC will alter future events. NBC does not care about the truth. NBC wants MONEY.
ALL MEDIA COMPANIES WANT MONEY!
They will lie, cheat, obfuscate, alter, hide,
change any story to make money.
Conclusion : Trust NO ONE!
While NBC may well have done what they are accused of (I wouldn't know, the BBC had it all live and unedited), it's not the most insulting thing they've done.
They bribed the Chinese organisers of the Olympics to put certain events early in the morning (local time). The swimming starting soon is an example. Why? So they would be during prime time in America. This sound fair enough, until you realise that prime time in America is THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IN EUROPE. So we get to miss half the events, just so it's a little more convenient for the Yanks. I mean, it's not like we invented the Olympics or anything...
Yes, the online one is out of order. What makes it so glaring is at one point, then mention that the US will be next after the commercial break. After the break, Uruguay was shown instead of the US, and is not shown until much later online. The broadcast feed on TV was not at least not done in the order that you're seeing online. I hope this answers your question. It's a bit frustrating to see no one answering the question, but talking about how evil/manipulative big media is.
Your president didn't even know when to stand up (only fot the USA itself) and not for the different countries (states/islands) that belong to the US.
Each time when one of those countries walked in, your president was sitting on his chair, bored to death. I guess he did't even know which countries belong to the USA and where he is president.
that the order was altered by the simple fact that it was observed and that for each of the observers, the order was different.
Sig this!
I'm sorry, but you are really getting hard up for something to be outraged about if you are worried that the parade of nations was broadcast out of order.
NBC hasn't done any honest reporting on anything in over 30 years. Why would anyone be surprised at this?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I noticed the IOC threw an absolute fit over the use of Army Rangers for some portions of the opening ceremonies in Atlanta in 1996. (They pleaded for the Rangers to not perform their contribution in uniform. They didn't.)
But I don't think the guys who raised the Olympic flag while GOOSE-STEPPING in China were members of the local Beijing Boy Scout troop.
Fucking IOC Hypocrites.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
President Bush check his watch during the parade?
He did?!
Keep up the good work vandelais - President Bush can't be allowed to get away with this!
Seriously people, get some perspective.
The Opening Ceremony shown in the US on Friday was not live. In fact, right at the beginning it said "Previously Recorded." On CNN in the afternoon, they even had an article titled "Chinese president declares Olympics officially open," which is an event that takes place in the Opening Ceremony. China is 12 hrs ahead of the US East Coast. It could not have been shown live, as there were fireworks and darkness throughout the ceremony that daylight would have made impossible.
As far as the order goes, they did mention a couple of times during the television broadcast that the order was not what we were used to, and explained the stroke-number-system that the Chinese organizers were using. It was a bit odd watching, but it made sense to me. Glancing at the list on Wikipedia, I seem to remember the countries being ordered that way. So the TV broadcast and the Wikipedia lists match.
They also briefly showed us the countries that we missed while we were away during the commercial break.
I'm not going to watch the online version, so I can't compare to that. The Parade of Nations is very boring, and I can live until the Winter Olympics in 2010 before seeing it again.
One way to compare the accuracy between the TV broadcast and the online version would be to look at the bottom third graphics. Because of the different order system, they had a dimmed out preview of the next three countries, in a slider that moved along. So, if the online version has those graphics, and the images presented match up with the list shown on Wikipedia, then it is the same version... Yes, I know they could have edited those too, but I'd rather not get out my tin foil hat.
Sounds like the did stuff around with the order the teams marched in. They certainly had enough time to do it - it was delayed half a day from when it really happened.
Opening ceremony was at 8pm on the 8th of August 2008 (Chinese like 8 - it's a lucky number :) and Beijing is at GMT+8. Some of the folks here in Melbourne, Australia were watching it that night live (about 10pm onwards local time). Based on the twitter feeds from those in the USA who were tweeting what they saw, it looked like they were watching it around 8pm on the 8th in THEIR time zone. Somewhat impossible, no?
I'm already hearing reports of US swimmers being coached to refer to the time of their race in US broadcast time rather than Beijing time. Ummmmmm - WTF?
So yeah, if you've got HOURS between recording the event and showing it then making any changes you want is a piece of cake.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Indeed. I believe the practice started with the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the German newsreels showed only negatives of all of the track and field events, so that a white Jesse Owens could be seen beating the pants off of all the black athletes.
I just sat through the four and a half hours of the opening ceremony that was aired last night on NBC here in the States (thank you TiVo), and as far as I can tell, it matched the order listed on Wikipedia pretty well. Even when they cut to commercial (shockingly infrequently), when they came back, the announcers went quickly through the missed countries, to catch back up to real time. Considering the soundtrack playing in the background while the countries were being read over the public address system in three languages, it would be pretty obvious if they skipped around, and the music and crowd noise suddenly changed. Politics aside, that's one of the coolest cultural and artistic displays I've ever seen.
According to friends in Europe, who watched the ceremonies live NBC totally used FAKE CROWD noise.
Apparently Vladimir Putin from Russia got the biggest crowd applause all night when they showed him on the big screen, and the Iraq athletes were given loud BOO's.
And all we heard all night long were the exact same levels of 'monotone cheering' on the NBC broadcast.
Don't believe ANYTHING you see on TV, especially if they had 12 hours to make changes,edits,lies.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
unless they alter the order of the medalists...
First time in years!
The Disney Christmas day parade is actually shot in November, or was it October. I can't quite remember.
Boss + family got to go down and see it.
So no surprise with the Olympics.
M
For the people who are not believing the order was changed: Zimbabwe and Tunisia show up before the US delegation on the NBC broadcast, where in reality they came after the US.
There is no way we could see a ~live~ broadcast in Prime Time (night) in the U.S. of an event that took place at night in China. Since we could see the dark sky and bright fireworks in the broadcast, and it was dark here while I watched it, simple astronomy tells me the broadcast could not be live. Since it was "recorded earlier" how does editing it differ from editing America's Got Talent?
Even if, by the time we saw it, the order of events was different from the order in which it happened, how is this a violation of our contract with NBC?
Free tibet.
The whole ceremony lasted 4.4 hours without any commercial interruption from CCTV1/5/7. I watched the whole live ceremony (don't ask how). I guarantee you NBC cut about at least 1/5. Who has more censoring?
...they didn't fix the audio and video cut outs and glitches in the TWELVE hours between the real deal and the tape delay. They were too busy screwing with cutting and pasting the athletes.
Freaking morons.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've never liked the Olympics due to the overwhelming amount of political crap that goes around it. Suddenly, sites that host the olympics turn into a police state. Friendly merchants now gouge the hell out of everyone. The IOC act like they are some sort of immortal god when it comes to anything olympics related, seeming to trump state & local government authority. And that's not even the dirty politics that people play just to get the olympics hosted in their neck of the woods.
Having it hosted in China seems like an Orwellian match made in haven. At least they did one thing nice to combat the smog: they postponed burning of political prisoners(okay, that was a joke).
Its not like there was any good summer programming on NBC anyways.
They must have edited out when the aliens finally introduced themselves to the planet earth at the opening events. It was edited out by the evil bastard Bush. He wants to keep you in the dark about our new extra-terrestrial friends because they're going to do away with the oil industry and that's going to run the Bush family broke!
Or maybe techmuse's tin foil hat is just a little too tight...
Wake me up when there is some real news.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Does it really matter? With Tivo, DVRs, and internet TV viewing, I have become used to watching content that interests me, in bits and pieces, and fast-forwarding through everything else. This sounds like a problem that doesn't need fixing.
Gold medal in the Markov chain event.
Perhaps they want to avoid another "Wardrobe Malfunction" going live on air...
http://www.justin.tv/channel34
photosMy Photostream
Almost all TV shows (especially the news) save the hot item for last so as to keep the audience watching the whole show. It happened regularly on Ed Sullivan and Carson. If you show the big act first, the watchers wander off. It is to be expected.
Well I'm using Vista.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I've given up trying to watch the olympics since the last few I watched chunks of were so heavily edited, and so horribly over commentated as to really ruin them.
Basically ou got the highlights and the bloopers, with commentary that would make Bob Sagat proud.
With 500 channels of cable/satellite it is a major shame that we can't have a dozen channels with nothing but live feed of virtually every venue in real time, with a 100% unedited repeat until the next day fires up. Instead I get a dozen channels of Law & Order reruns (Law & Order, Spedcial Ed. Unit).
Maybe they wanted to edit out 'W' looking at his watch. Notice how Mrs. Bush always looked poised and well composed? Makes me wonder what the last eight years would have been like if she had been president...
Sorry about the anonymous post but I had to mention that some countries might not have been called at all thanks to NBC's editing. I waited through it but Mexico never walked even though there were random bits of Mexican music in the background which suggest that they were somewhere behind the countries being called but they never came and the music kept stopping and then coming again.
Textbook definition of "slow news day."
i watched it live in japan-on NHK.
china was last, the USA somewhere near the middle/end.
i imagine that the entire show was edited...especially the CHEERS that the USA recieved when taking the field. (btw, north korea got cheered too!) the Australians and the British were also recieved well.
awesome show!
They'd never show the opening ceremonies live - those three 4$$h0l3$ reading the commentary can't possibly THINK fast enough to do it live, they had to voice-over the production to get parts of it right, you could see/hear the slight difference even on videotape.
Crowd noises were inconsistent, quality was crappy, editing was out of sequence - a blind, hydrocephalic, legless, autistic dead man with iMovie could've done a better job.
After all the criticism of previous olympic shows for exactly the same tape-delaying you'd think they'd AT LEAST run the opening/closing ceremonies on-time.
The earliest olympics I was old enough to appreciate was Tokyo in '64 and even though the satellite-relayed pictures were grainy and noisy I can remember thinking "gee, this is happening on the other side of the world RIGHT NOW..." and it was awesome to realize that even though it was an event a half-a-world away from me I could see it (essentially) immediately. The world stopped seeming unimaginably large right at that moment.
Too bad "Nothing But Crap" can't see their way clear to keep even THAT four hours of the games live (well, AND the closing ceremonies) - the rest of the games don't matter as much, but there's somethng special about seeing the opening/closing live from the other side of the planet.
(/soppy_romanticism)
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I don't care about the order of the athletes so much as the fact that they didn't broadcast it live at all. I had hoped to have watched it at the same time as my friends in Beijing, but was unable to do this. As far as I know, the USA is the only country who failed to broadcast the opening when it really happened. (some, like Canada, broadcast it twice - in real time and later a repeat in the evening.)
In the old days (don't call me geezer!) they did lots of live broadcasting, and, while it was a strain to get up in the middle of the night to see it, there's something about that experience that brings home a real sense of the world, and how big it is. In this case, there's a sense of wonder to the idea that you're watching something at the same time as people all around the world. NBC, unsurprisingly but no less disgustingly, prefers profit over human fellowship.
Of course, if you disagree with my point of view, that's no problem - you can just record it if it's broadcast live in the middle of the night.
What's even more frustrating is that I was unable to find an unblocked stream in another country so I could watch it on my computer. I found out later that some German stations hadn't blocked it. There was an article in the New York times today how NBC kept playing internet "whack a mole" with those who knew how to find a way around their blocking. Well, so much for the idea that the Internet is free. Kind of feels like the West must have felt when they fenced it all in.
actually I'm going to China soon, and I was going to start studying methods of circumventing China's great firewall. I wish I'd started already. Maybe I could (ironically) have used those methods to circumvent the great NBC firewall and watched the feeds from China or Canada.
I watched the Opening Ceremony broadcast and it was amazing. I went back to show my sister some of the highlights (she was asleep) and I couldn't find the drums that did the count down on the NBC site. I finally found it at the end of the Opening Ceremony video clip. That was the last place I was looking for it. Sounds like the order of the parade is not alone in this situation.
I don't think that's the biggest issue, Did anyone notice that kid next to Yao Ming was given a upside down flag? And they kept showing the kid.
I would assume that it was only in the online broadcast if the event was shown live.... but if NBC had stock footage of the future, I would be intrigued to see how many golds Canada wins right now
They could show events, and people getting different scores. OMG AMERICANS GET PERFECT 10s! (Or whatever number scheme they have this time around, I think it can go up to 20 now... Even Spinal Tap didn't think about THAT!)
Its like the debates... if NBC broadcast them, could (would) they mish mash the talks, have OBama reply correctly/accurately to one question, than have McCain answer a question from a half-hour ago about education? etc etc?
Where do you draw the line?
I always thought the broadcast of the Olympics would be like a documentary, putting down on video exactly what happens, then broadcasting it. I haven't watched so I don't know if they have commercial breaks, but Sports games do.
They don't show the 1st quarter, the 3rd, the 4th, then the 2nd. That's ludicrous. Its stupid. And its a lie.
Maybe I Should just switch to Fox News. :p
I heard the 2008 Olympics were not held. John Titor told me so. Maybe that was an alternate timeline. Divergence is a bitch.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A network editing its content to "improve reality"? Incredible!
Well, there WAS that whole thing with that Katie Couric interview with John McCain where they basically realized McCain was rambling in an answer, so they cut and pasted another one of his answers over that one to make him sound more coherant...but nah. No way!
ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX...you wonder if the people running the show at any of those stations ever read 1984. You wonder if they ever creep themselves out with some of the stuff they pull to improve ratings. News shows ARE the new sitcoms. They know that sitcoms get more viewers than the news, so they've made the news like sitcoms or staged "reality" shows. It's not about the truth, it's about the money, buddy.
the Australian commercial network (was it 7?),
that:
- agreed to air a -controversial- sponsored ad
- both BEFORE and AFTER the opening ceremony -
(here in Australia),
- but NEVER ran the ad at all!!!
(The ad focused on human rights abuses in China...
Did I mention that our Prime Minister - Rudd, who speaks Chinese - was at the opening ceremony? ...and is a BIG supporter of China, I understand.)
I think the offending TV network -claimed- the opening ceremony ran longer than expected... hence the cuts.
(So, how does that explain why the ad wasn't run BEFORE the ceremony?!?)
I know what you mean, the part with the red drumsticks was terrible camera work. However I don't think it was NBC, I think it was the same pool cameras that I watched here in Oz.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The first time I watched this, I couldn't figure out what order they were coming out in. I was watching it in a foreign stream with Chinese commentary and then it was later switched to Norwegian, cause I had no English stream available to me in Norway, where I am currently living.
But I later downloaded copies of the broadcast from NBC and Australia's 7 network, and briefly compared bits of them. They seemed to be roughly the same, except for different camera angles. I checked the countries too, and in all 4 streams that I saw, they did all come out in the same order.
But I can't believe they put ad breaks in the NBC broadcast! Channel 7 broadcast the whole thing completely free of ads, like they always do. Although, it was broadcast live in Australia. Also, I found the Australian commentators better (though I'm a little bias, since I am Australian)
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Unbelievable, I can't believe that the news entertainment industry would change reality to suit their purpose. That would be like a politician leaving out key points of information that might alter the size of their support group.
I guess that's why they formed an image of a dove...
...I think a lot of the precision and discipline are inherently Asian values. If Japan were to host the Olympic games we would see at least an opening ceremony in the same ballpark. As for the rest, I'd have to agree. That's the "advantage" of a centralized, authoritarian government.
...on the BBC web site. So all you have to do is move to the UK and buy a TV license then you're set to watch it again on the BBC iPlayer. The online viewing works in FireFox using Flash so I'd guess it'd work on a Linux box too?
The parents interpretation is a reflection of himself. It is not the Chinese that "scare the fuck" out of me. (I wonder if I correctly guess that the parent is an American?)
In my opinion, China views the "entire Olympic exercise" as a demonstration that they are as capable as any "Western, First World" nation and are deserving of treatment as an equal by the rest of the world. Reasonable people call it "National Pride" - that you find it intimidating speaks volumes about your own preconceptions.
You seem impressed with what the Chinese have done with their capital over the past 6 years; shall we discuss what America (and allies) has done with Iraq's capital over the past (almost) 6 years? "If not bound by troublesome concepts like fairness, freedom, and morality, you can achieve great things." - Indeed.
They didn't alter the order at all when it was broadcast "live."
The bottom of the screen had a running lineup telling you which countries were up next, and it perfectly coincided with what was listed on Wikipedia.
Anyone that thinks it was out of order either wasn't paying attention, or is simply looking for an excuse to bitch about NBC requiring Silverlight instead of making an exception for the 1% of linux-only users and going with Flash.
Scientology supporter, huh?
Anybody seen those huge mechanized billboards on NASCAR (or the French F1 race) used to advertise the network. They aint there either.
How do you think the MSNBC got it's name. A partnership exists as matter of fact. I wonder if the folks looking into anti-trust have looked at this "silverlight" move by Microsoft yet (as an anti-competition weapon against open source and LINUX).
I had the true pleasue of watching opening ceremonies live, unedited, without commerical interpertution on Broadcast TV in Costa Rica.
I know NBC has paid a fortune for the rights and has to recope the $, but how are the overseas broadcasters making money without showing commercials.
In a parallel universe... or, given an infinite amount of time, the NBC broadcast will eventually arrive at a place where the marching order is correct. So, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Gently reply
Not to record history Not to broadcast 'truth' Not to present 'facts' THEY SELL ADVERTIZING Btw - that goes for 'News' papers, magazines, radio, billboards....
NBC explained several times why the order was so mixed up. The Chinese ordered the country by the number of stokes used to write the countries name in Chinese because the Chinese do not have an alphabet like ours.
I didn't realize they were even on, until I saw something on the news website Saturday afternoon. I don't bother with crap like the Olympics...most of the (so called) athletes are doped up on something for the "extra" edge anyway.
>> Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings? Was this true only online, or also in the live broadcast?
Yes, they altered the order during the live broadcast too.
What with the time machine they have, they can do that, live.
Is subby retarded?
You've got to cut the guy some slack: (1) It was unbelievably hot and uncomfortable in the stadium (2) The parade of nations is unnecessarily long and boring (heck, I tivo'd it and watched it sped up and it still took an hour) (3) President Bush can't look at a watch discreetly -- it takes time to figure out which is the hour hand and which does the minutes, and Mickey's so gosh-darn cute you can't help but stare
Here in the Denver area[1] , the audio on the broadcast cut out *exactly* when the Chinese national anthem started; seems very convenient to me.
Now, it did stay cut out for a ton of time afterward, including across an ad break, so maybe I'm being a little conspiratorial, but...
[1] Fort Collins, via Comcast cable.
If NBC was doing that much editing, why would they NOT cut out the one (maybe more?) shot of Bush yawning and looking at his watch?
Surely its much better for them to show everyone being completely interested, involved and smiling at the event?
I mean really. This is a sporting event. Its not news, its entertainment. To be quite honest, had they shortened the whole thing to show the US enter the arena, then moved right onto the entertainment, I'd have been happier. And its not because I'm so US centric. If I were from Canada, I'd probably only care about the Canadians, but I happen to be from the US. I want to see who I will be rooting for and what they look like. I don't give a damn what the South Koreans are wearing, I really don't And not knowing does not make me less informed of world events. I read my news from the BBC to find out what's going on in the world (not because I think they are unbiased, but because they do a better job of carrying non US news, which accounts for most news). I also read my local newspaper's website for local and US news. When I watch television, its for entertainment, and for that I wanted to the the US and the festivities that followed the parade. Had I thought about it and TiVOed it, I would probably have fast forwarded and watched just those portions later. I mean come one, what's entertaining about the parade, unless you tell me that the Swedish womens beach volleyball team paraded in in the nude, its not that entertaining, and even then, there are better pictures on the web.
Get a life people.
The giant firework footprints were faked too, already at the source. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html
Changing the order of things may seem like a trivial change but unless it is explained that this has been done it may give the impression of a very different series of events. Just ask the BBC.
i was keenly watching the finals of the women's 4 x 100 meter relay. at the very start i noticed something wrong. lead-off U.S. swimmer natalie coughlin hit the pool first and had a half body length over everyone else at the 50 meter mark yet somehow was overtaken by the australian and the dutch on the way back. the 2nd leg U.S. swimmer was even slower. dara torres for all her vaunted strength could never have overtaken the dutch and the australian with the lead they had on the final leg. now natalie coughlin is a world record holder. for her to be overtaken in a relay, particularly in the lead-off, is very suspicious. if she had just kept her lead, the U.S. could probably have won the gold. did she intentionally hold back so as to conserve her strength for her individual events? if she goes on to win these in record times i'd say she really did ease off in the 4 x 100 team relay.
They do that lame stuff with every other form of media. What do you think "uncut/unedited" movies are? What about them resold "bonus features"? Have you played any games lately? Seriously I either wait until movies come out on dvd to watch them or watch them subtitled from other countries, and as far as games go I fully advocate third party patching (you know the developers woulda made those scenes official if they could). What about bleeped music? You know some places their only choice to get quality unedited material is to pirate it? Like when 9/11 hit I was like OMG its finally come we all gonna go shoot some esrb mofos and free the radio waves for some high quality tunes, the age of intellectual oppression is over! But nah then I found it just some pissy islamic guys or something. You all make me sick, damn sheep. This story is so weak....
A reasoned explanation for what TV viewers saw, what Internet viewers saw, and a mechanism by which the difference could arise from stupidity rather than malice. When a thread has 441 comments and one of those comments answers all that, sometimes you just need a Score:6, Informative.
Now that we have that settled... I want to thank Coke and NBC for showing Sunday's Olympic Basketball match between China and USA with minimal commercials. Good job. Have a coke. The opening ceremony was another matter, however, which was disgracefully and disrespectfully chopped up with commercials every couple of minutes.
Computers obey me.
I compared the completed version provided by CCTV with the one from NBC, NBC only shown about 80% of the ceremony's performances, and that's already excluding the parade of nation. The performance they edited out includes Chinese Opera and Chinese tradition puppet show. There you go from the network of peacock!
According to this article: Beijing Olympic 2008 opening ceremony giant firework footprints 'faked' the coverage was not only edited, censored, audio altered but the fireworks in what you saw may have been a computer generated graphic.
This reality TV is really cool stuff!
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
When I was younger I remember watching the Olympics on every major channel and you tunned into the sport that seemed interesting to you to watch. I remember getting so mad that I could not watch my regularly scheduled programs due to the Olympics. They broacasted day and night non stop.
How I wish those days were back, now I am forced to watch what the dirt bag network (singular we bought the exclusive broadcast rights) deem to be highly watched programs.
The Olympics are so much more clouded with politics and so much corporate manipulation that it ozzes of pure shit.
They cry because nobody is watching them, I wonder why.
I want to see the sports that I dont normaly see televised. I want to see other countries althetic best. I want to hear other countries nathional anthems being played.
I want to travel the world from the comfort of my living room.
In Surveillance UK, Olympic events watch you.
In a lot of the programmes that NBC broadcasts in the states..
Some call it creative editing.., but the so called "live" shows that I've noticed it in also make me wonder.
The thing that really scares me about it is most of the others that I'm watching with don't blink an eye to it. But it leaves me feeling unsettled and like something is amiss every time I noticed it.
It's near the point where I don't bother watching anything anymore, but it drives me crazy!
It is "Memento".
Is NBC altering the reality of the broadcast to boost ratings?
Your question is easily answered by looking up "television" in the dictionary.
This is one of the reasons I agree with the TV license and am thankful for the BBC's services in the UK.
- Dan
That is why i love the BBC, watch it live no adverts and then later you can download it on to your computer and watch it again, skipping past the boring bits. (the endless parade)
...it doesn't bother any of you that this is an entirely inaccurate claim? The order wasn't changed at all, and whoever alleged that it was is smoking crack.
who cares about that ?? really ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?