NBC Versus the Internet ?

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NBC Versus the Internet ?
by Adam Bogacki 10:22pm Tue Aug 29 '00
afb3@primus.com.au

The business model on which the 2K Olympics are based may
be under threat by new developments in streaming audio and
video NBC/IOC have injuncted local media against adding audio
& video clips to Olympic web sites in order to protect US TV
viewing schedules.

A number of independent sources have confirmed that NBC has attempted to protect its ownership of the television rights to the 2K Olympics - for which, reputedly, billions of dollars have been paid - by pressuring the IOC to injunct local Sydney media against adding streaming audio and video clips to their Olympic websites.

There exists a gap of eight to twelve hours between an event in Sydney and prime time news in the US in which NBC is - realistically - worried it may be gazumped by the Internet.

These Olympics will embrace the Net like no Games before ('Icon', Aug 26, http://www.smh.com.au) and the possibility exists that the current corporate model dreamt up by Horst Dassler of Adidas and implemented by Juan Antonio Samaranch (Simpson & Jennings, 1992; Jennings, 1996) may be in danger of being subverted by
developments in Internet technologies.

More to the point, we are seeing a traditional one-way hierarchical media organisation lashing out at an emerging decentralised and interactive model which is potentially much harder to manipulate and control.

What if some people equipped themselves with digital audio and video gear and uploaded files of notable events before US prime time ? The magnetometers at the gates of Olympic venues, supposedly looking for weapons, may be there to prevent such an eventuality.

A lot will be happening away from the main venues and this outcome is almost inevitable. The Olympic TV franchise will become less valuable and the Games themselves may be allowed to return to their home in Olympia in Greece where they could be preserved as a traditional festival held, hopefully, in the nude.

There are many reasons to believe that their revival by the conservative Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 has reached a logical end. And there are many in Sydney - originally an irreverent convict colony - who do not like the prospect of every control freak in town being given licence to pursue their dreams of a 'New Order'.

References.

Viv Simson & Andrew Jennings, "The Lords of The Rings", Simon & Schuster 1992

Andrew Jennings, "The NEW Lords of The Rings", Pocket Books, 1996.

Ends

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