On Friday, July 26, 2024, during the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, an artistic performance intended to be a part of the planned program was not broadcast in the United States.
At approximately two hours into the broadcast, shortly after the introduction of France’s athletes (the last group to be introduced), the program moved to a series of music and dance performances, including a floating disco and a Dionysian feast.
During this, the US broadcast cut away to advertising breaks and exclusive interviews with US-based athletes while audiences outside the US remained with the main program.
This video features a side-by-side comparison of this portion of the live broadcasts into Australia (via the broadcaster Stan.) and the United States (via the broadcaster NBC) to illustrate the differences between what was presented to each audience.
Audio for each broadcast has been isolated onto opposing audio channels (US on the left, Australia on the right), allowing viewers to use headphones to selectively listen to either channel alone, or both at the same time.
I really don’t understand why the white house hasn’t publicly talked about how bad NBC is butchering coverage of the Olympics. This is supposed to be a big event that promotes unity and you can’t even watch most of it without a streaming paywall. Not to mention the terrible announcers and general coverage.
IMO the Olympics should be broadcasted by public television.
No, they only claim unity. The Commission is beyond corrupt. They are willing to overlook injustice, war crimes, etc.
My guess is that the Olympic coverage is a pretty low priority for the White House right now. They’ve been a tad preoccupied with Biden stepping down, Harris coming in, Trump’s assassination attempt, the rise of American fascism, wars with two allies, etc.
Probably because NBC knows what gets the most viewers, and if most US viewers want to watch bullshit, that’s on them.
Holy fucking bullshit batman, i felt like the opening ceremony felt lacking, and now i know why.
They did the same thing in 2012 iirc, whichever one was in London. They don’t broadcast the artsy/tribute stuff in the United States. It was bullshit then and it’s bullshit now
I didn’t watch this, but is it possible NBC had multiple streams of this?
Watching the video, it is almost hilarious how bad the USA stream is. It’s like having the Super Bowl halftime show going on and the camera is only focused on the celebrities and athletes in the audience while an announcer talks over all the music.
You’ve just described NBC’s coverage of the entirety of the games at every event since at least 2012
At least on Peacock, NBCs streaming platform that claims it has all streams that are being broadcast in the US, there was only the main NBC feed. They do show world feeds during the day of various sports but usually opening and closing ceremonies we are stuck with the truly terrible broadcasts NBC puts together.
As a USAian I would be grateful if someone could provide a link to this section of the ceremony because it looks really cool but the split audio makes it tough to watch with my wife (and I don’t really need to see the shit NBC coverage in the corner).
I’d recommend watching it on a phone or laptop with headphones with one of the ear pieces taken out.
I tried uploading the unedited clip on its own a few days ago, but it was removed for violating copyright. Compositing the videos together counts as new/unique content, and the muxed audio does help bolster this claim.
If you have a vpn, you might try opening a connection within one of the counties that is streaming the games for free and try to watch on one of their websites.
Go watch on CBC’s website. You can see every moment without advertisement or bad commentary. You might need a vpn though.
