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August 9, 2012
The Olympics are finally drawing to a close. So what we will remember. The poor performance of the Australian team? The poor coverage of the Games by the media? The impact of social media? The heavy handed commercialization of the games?
Martin Rowson
For me the Olympics spectacle highlights the shift in the television mediascape in Australia. Australian commercial free-to-air television has built up an impressive track record of treating its viewers with contempt as it chases the advertising dollar and sticks to routine broadcast schedules even during major sporting events.
The track record continues with Nine's horrendous single-channel Olympics coverage coverage of the 2012 Olympics. It's mixture of vacuous autocue jockeys, constantly repeated mind-numbing advertisements, and limited events are shown on delay have failed to deliver to Nine's viewers.
No longer is the only other option taking out an expensive pay TV subscription from Foxtel. There is the web---livestreaming direct from the BBC's sports portal utilizing net tools that get around the geo-blocking imposed by the IOC to protect its own content or intellectual property.
The National Broadband Network means that the streaming services over the internet will be available to a lot more people, and that puts pressure on Foxtel to be more flexible when it comes to traditional subscriptions, and to provide easier multichannel access.
This is not an internet vs TV narrative. The movement away traditional TV with its scarcity of content within dictated timeslots is more about the options opening up for consumers and them being able to take greater control of what and how they want to watch events and programs.
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If you dont like sport dont watch it.
What a stupid post.