Why the Olympics broadcast beats online
NEW YORK — When it comes to the Olympics, too much choice can paralyze you with indecision. With five television channels, online streaming, virtual reality and Snapchat, where do you even start?
Catch curling on the USA Network, and you might miss that superb — or disastrous — figure skating routine that will be talked about on social media and in the office. Tune into a stream of figure skating, and you might miss that medal-winning run down the slopes.
With an event as sprawling as the Olympics, sometimes the straight-up linear TV broadcast is best, even if you’re watching that online. Experts make the choices for you; all you have to do is lean back on your couch.
That’s not to say alternatives to the main NBC broadcast are pointless. Die-hard fans of biathlon can choose that and nothing else. Snapchat users who might have skipped the Olympics entirely might at least catch the few minutes of live video offered there each day.
How, then, is broadcast better?
For one thing, watching online takes work. With luge and skeleton, for instance, it takes five hours to watch all four runs down the track — longer if you add training runs. There’s no easy way to jump straight to an athlete who isn’t prominent, such as the lone competitor from the tropical country of Ghana. The ability to jump to any athlete is limited to figure skating and some alpine skiing events.
As for virtual reality, you might feel as though you’re in an Olympic arena or on a mountain, but only television can offer close-ups with its zoom cameras. Figure skating, for instance, feels distant; the VR camera’s wider shot is of a mostly empty ice rink. With luge, each athlete whizzes by in a second, whereas TV can capture the entire, 45-second-plus run with multiple cameras.
Complain all you want about interruptions in the broadcast for puffy profiles, but they offer a nice break from what looks to an untrained eye like skier after skier making the same run down the slope. (That said, snazzy technology superimposes two skiers on the same image, so broadcast viewers can compare and contrast their runs.)
Also welcome in the broadcast are segments on Korean culture and politics. It’s easy to miss those when filtering for specific events or athletes.