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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.
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Last Post!!!!
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?
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.
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.
"make something up" like apply 3000 year old rules, accepted by all for ordering countries in Mandarin?
So no, they didn't make anything up.
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.
Sounds like a Quentin Tarnetino flick.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Yeah but more entertaining & original.
This is more than a bunch of athletes my friend. Go back and watch the opening ceremonies, and tell me that country does not scare the fuck out of you. The level of discipline demonstrated by the performers, the sheer precision of it all... it all far exceeds anything the West could possibly pull off. And that's DAMNED scary.
China is living proof that, if not bound by troublesome concepts like fairness, freedom, and morality, you can achieve great things. That scares the bejesus out of me. The entire Olympic exercise, for China at least, is one of intimidation. Here's them flexing their muscle, showing the world that, at a moment's notice, they can throw away billions, not feel the pinch, mobilize hundreds of thousands of people without any messy bureaucracy, and completely transform the entire city nearly overnight (well, 6 years, that's damned short).
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.
That would just lead to a rash of countries with names like A One Republic and AAA Reliable Nation (well, probably in the French equivalent).
"Momento" sure made a lot more sense when it was shown on NBC!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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 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.
Most Chinese dictionaries actually sort characters first by the radical and then by stoke count within each group of radicals.
Fool! Look at the government sanctioned sites! There are NO radicals in China!