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?"

Comments

olypics video tech

[drDugan]

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.

Re:not a real issue

[tinycorkscrew]

If you had RTFA, you would know that's not the issue raised by the submitter. The question isn't how the countries were ordered, it is whether NBC's broadcast actually showed the countries in that order.

Re:dilemma

[lp.sresu]

It's even more commercial if you watch it on NBC. I swear if one of the athletes so much as coughs they go to commercial. "Fuck seeing the games, here are more inspiring ads from our sponsors!"

Re:not a real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

"make something up" like apply 3000 year old rules, accepted by all for ordering countries in Mandarin?

Re:not a real issue

[fmobus]

You sure? Wikipedia says they do have a standard collation:

All other nations marched in name order in the language of the host nation, which in this case is the Chinese language. The collation method used is based on the names as written in Simplified Chinese characters and is similar to that used in Chinese dictionaries. The names were sorted by the number of strokes in the first character of the name, then by the total number of strokes in each subsequent character.

So no, they didn't make anything up.

Broadcast version not altered

[zsazsa]

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.

Re:Broadcast version not altered

[zsazsa]

Ok, I just checked the online version... and it's totally mixed up and out of order. It's definitely not the correct order as seen in the broadcast version.

Re:Not news.

[telso]

Actually, editing is not an Olympic broadcasting tradition; it's an NBC Olympic broadcasting tradition. Most Olympic networks show as much as they can live, and only show events tape-delayed when there are two events worth watching at the same time (or they're showing recaps when it's night time where the Olympics are).

NBC, on the other hand, instead of showing one of the most exciting opening ceremonies ever, decided to show The Today Show and, in my area, local news (apparently some loser got arrested for a domestic assault!).

Sadly, this is not news either. Which is why most Americans who live on the Canadian border watch the Olympics on CBC.

Re:not a real issue

[Andraax]

I did, in fact, watch the entire broadcast. The countries were not broadcast in that order.

I watched the entire broadcast (TiVo'd it) and was so impressed, I stayed up until 4am and watched it all over again. While I don't have the countries memorized in the order they appeared, but from what I do remember, it seems about the same as on the Wikipedia article. The US came in about 2/3 of the way down the list in the broadcast and they're #139 of 204 in Wikipedia (or roughly 2/3 of the way down the list).

I did notice that a number of small countries got very short screen times and seemed "clipped", so I guess they edited out some content to shorten up the whole thing.

Re:Other countries?

[Minwee]

I thought only America was in the World Series. When did they start letting other countries participate?

There we go, fixed it for you.

Since you asked, it was in 1969. However it wasn't until 1992 that a clearly superior team from another country was allowed to win.

They then won again in 1993, and the 1994 World Series was canceled when it looked like a foreign team was going to win for the third time in a row and the US teams refused to play unless the rules were changed in their favour.

Now you know.

Re:This just in...

[nascarguy27]

If you had watched the actual broadcast on your local NBC affiliate, and then watched the online version, as I did, you would see that NBC screwed up while putting up the parade online. The segments between "commercial breaks", as in the content segments, were placed online out of the order they were originally broadcast in. That's why it appears not in order online.

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?"

emphasis mine

To sum up NBC's 12 hour tape-delayed broadcast was in order, while the online version was shown out of order either due to NBC wanting it like that or, more likely, whoever put the parade online didn't pay attention as he/she was supposed to.