Curling's popularity as a Winter Olympic sport in America is still growing. In fact, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi may be something of a turning point for curling on television and as a sport in America. It's crossed over from a quirky cult hit into an event that more and more people legitimately care about. The tweets continue to pour in on social media during live curling action and there are actually serious columns at national outlets about how America can be more competitive in Olympic curling. Each time one of John Shuster's rocks finishes a centimeter further away from the button than his opposition it's another stomach punch for the entire country.
The USA men and women combined for a 3-15 record at the 2014 Winter Olympics. The men finished 9th in the 10-team round robin portion of the competition, the women 10th. These results are even more disappointing considering that the US women were medal hopefuls entering the games and suffered one blowout loss after another including allowing an Olympic record 7 point end to Great Britain early on in the tournament.
But the lack of American success has not dampened enthusiasm for curling. The Norwegian team's curling pants are nothing short of a phenomenon. The Russian women's team and skip Anna Sidorova (pictured above) are popular for, well, obvious reasons. And there are plenty of other big personalities and very talented athletes to be drawn to in the sport. Although there isn't much data out there, ratings appear to be up for curling in 2014.
So why is it so difficult to watch live curling on television from Sochi?
It comes down to NBC's tape delay strategy in televising the Winter Olympics across its platform of networks. With the 9 hour time difference from the east coast to Sochi, NBC's tape delay policy has led to a television schedule that can be incredibly convoluted at times, especially when it comes to showing live curling.
Theoretically, the curling schedule at the Olympics should set up perfectly for live coverage back home stateside. During the round-robin portions, three sessions took place every day at 12 AM ET, 5 AM ET, and 10 AM ET with four matches taking place at once. And yet, NBC has consistently just shown one match from the 5 AM session live on television.
In fairness to the peacock, all of these matches have been streamed live on NBCOlympics.com and the quality of streaming is greatly improved from London 2012. Although it may be difficult to navigate at times, the NBC website's offering of live streaming has been the single best development in the network's Olympic coverage in the last decade. Now sports fans at least have a viable option to watch events live instead of having to always wait for NBC's packaged tape delay coverage.
But that doesn't mean NBC isn't missing an enormous opportunity by not showing more events live on television. NBCSN's live coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics have consistently been setting records for the cable sports network. Everything from figure skating to ski jumping to hockey have been bringing in some of NBCSN's biggest audiences in its history. Between all of NBC's cable networks, live coverage of hockey and figure skating have been great from a quality and quantity standpoint.
If you're NBC, and you're setting records for your fledgling cable sports network with live Olympic coverage, why in the world would you not show as much live Olympics on cable as possible, especially when one of your most popular sports (curling) can be heavily featured?
Monday's final day of the curling round-robin highlights the scheduling lapse for NBCSN and the crazy nature of NBC's tape delay strategy. Instead of showing USA-South Korea women's curling live at 12 AM ET, it was shown on tape delay at 3 AM ET on NBCSN. That's right. Instead of being shown live at midnight, curling was delayed until the middle of the night. Who has ever heard of tape delaying something to put on the air at 3 AM? It's preposterous!
Do you know what NBCSN was showing at 12 AM ET? Mecum Auto Auctions: Kissimmee. During its premier event of the year, when the most people are tuning in to NBCSN, the network was showing a taped car show while live events were taking place. It makes no sense! Here's what all the Winter Olympic networks were showing at midnight:
NBCSN – Mecum Auto Auctions: Kissimmee
USA – Modern Family reruns
MSNBC – Lockup: New Mexico
CNBC – American Greed
NBC – Late Night Olympic coverage (east coast), Primetime Olympic coverage (west coast)
While live curling was taking place, NBC was showing precisely zero live event coverage. In fact, at 1 AM ET early Monday morning, NBC showed the semifinals of the women's snowboard cross that happened a full 20 hours earlier. NBC was almost an entire day behind! And that leads to the network continuing to have to play catch up throughout the games.
There's only one possible explanation for this that comes to mind – NBC protecting its network primetime coverage. Although it was midnight on the east coast, NBC was showing its twice tape delayed primetime coverage on the west coast. And the peacock is loathe to airing live events up against its primetime coverage in any time zone. Primetime is the holy grail and everything must be sacrificed for it.
It's quite frankly a backwards philosophy, especially in 2014. As these Olympics have shown, NBC can have their cake and eat it too with showing events live and in primetime. One only has to look at figure skating to see the success of NBCSN's live coverage and primetime ratings. Live options don't necessarily hurt the primetime audience. The amount of television viewers switching from primetime coverage on the west coast to live curling would have a minimal impact on primetime ratings. And if anything, it would only serve to continue to boost NBCSN and Olympic coverage as a whole.
NBCSN's ratings successes during these Winter Olympics should embolden the people who run the Olympics at the peacock to show more live events regardless of time. Not less. Purely from a business standpoint, NBCSN should be running as much live Olympic coverage as humanly possible. Not to mention what it would mean to hardcore Olympic fans.
Elsewhere on Monday's curling television schedule, the Switzerland-USA men's matchup was shown live on USA at 5 AM ET. And, the Denmark-Great Britain match that took place during the 10 AM ET session will be shown on CNBC at 5 PM ET. It's not been easy for curling fans trying to follow along on TV this year. That's three different networks televising games with one being live and two being on tape delay. Again, like at midnight, NBC is missing an opportunity to put live curling on somewhere at 10 AM ET. Only NBCSN was showing live Olympic coverage at 10 AM ET Monday morning – MSNBC, CNBC, and USA were all on the sidelines.
NBC has all of these networks in which to show live Olympic coverage, especially curling, and yet it chooses not to do so. The only thing holding NBC back from televising more live curling and more live Olympic coverage is NBC.
It's not necessarily a #NBCFail of epic proportions. However, the nature of the tape delay policy from Sochi and the lack of live events is worth lifting up as a missed opportunity for NBC, and especially NBCSN, to further bolster the peacock's live Olympic coverage and bring it into a modern age.
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