It's things like this that really makes me hate our U.S. media cartel. It's sad but true fact that the U.S. media withholds information, leaves out important stories, airs political and commercial "news" stories, commentary and opinion pieces as news, and filling the news with just what will draw ratings. The problem is all the U.S. news is owned by major corporations whose only concern is profits not reporting news. To give an overview of how bad it is for the U.S. media be sure to check out this link. The Big Ten. This shows that the U.S. media is totally controlled by 10 major organizations/corporations whose only motivation is greed.
The latest major offense is being perpetrated by the NBC media corporation. NBC bought the rights to air the Olympics for the U.S, at the cost of $894 million dollars for the rights to broadcast the Beijing Games, and is spending more than 100 million dollars to transmit the games and pageantry. So these means right off the bat they are motivated to make their money back and more profit and not airing the Olympics for all the world to see. To the tune of more than 1 billion dollars worth of advertising on NBC. This is further complicated by the time difference between the U.S. and China. This means live coverage starts at 2 a.m. Central time for U.S. viewers. So NBC must balance showing live TV events and reviewing or re-airing events of major interest that may have aired during the night or morning which is the dead zones of US viewership.
But this does not excuse NBC from their current hi-jinx's. It started with the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The opening ceremony took place Friday morning for U.S. viewers but NBC withhold the opening ceremonies for up to 15 hours so they could show them during a prime viewer window of Friday evening to maximize ratings and profit. As if this offense was not bad enough, in an age of digital connectivity, NBC like all the media conglomerates were quick to try and censor the world to protect their pocket. The digital age tried to share with the world and especially the U.S. who couldn't see it, what was one of the most amazing opening ceremonies ever. NBC though was in overdrive, harassing websites and internet providers trying to block U.S. citizens from watching videos of the opening ceremonies from other countries broadcasts, China's, Germany's, and even a bad grainy Spanish broadcast. They even went as far as blocking U.S. access to other countries broadcasting websites and forcing video sites, web developers, and even blogger to withdraw the footage, even from other countries.
As if this was not bad enough offense, NBC has taken even further steps to place them selves at the top for one of the worst botched airings of the Olympics. For West coast and Mountain time viewers they will have to suffer through a 3 hour delay for the whole of the Olympics. East coast and Central time viewers can watch the Olympics live.
This is beyond incompetence, this is down right embarrassing and a sad tragedy. In an age of digital TV, a wired world, and instant access to information, we are still stuck with profit mongering and last century habits. What is shaping up to be an amazing Olympic event showcasing the best of China and the world is marred by incompetence, greed, and misinformation by our information providers.
Tis' a sad, sad sight.
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