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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Sports Open Thread: Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony This Evening

Sports Open Thread: Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony This Evening

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So now we get a respite from politics and money and the intersection of the… hahahahaha. The Washington Post explains “Why you won’t be seeing the Olympic Opening Ceremonies live”:

… The Peacock Network plans to show the Opening Ceremonies of the Rio Olympic Games on Friday night with a one-hour delay. And viewers who live in the western U.S. will find their telecast delayed even longer.

NBC will start its broadcast at 8 p.m. ET, although the Opening Ceremonies in Rio, which is one hour ahead of the Eastern time zone, will begin at 7 p.m. ET.

“We think it’s important to give context to the show,” Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBC Sports Group, said earlier this month. “These Opening Ceremonies will be a celebration of Brazilian culture, of Rio, of the pageantry, of the excitement, of the flair this beautiful nation has. We think it’s important that we are able to put that in context for the viewer so that it’s not just a flash of color.”…

And god forbid if anything terrible should happen, the NBC suits don’t want that marring their ad-buy-friendly happytalk broadcast.

Viewers in the Mountain time zone will have a two-hour delay, and viewers in the Pacific time zone will have a four-hour delay. The network plans to delay the broadcasts on its streaming service, too, so that won’t be a workaround. And don’t expect the practice to change in future Games. NBC’s delayed broadcast is a tradition it has maintained for 20 years largely because it believes its audience, which is mostly female, watches sports differently from men…

It’s not as though the viewing audience has changed over the past 20 years, at least not as far as NBC is concerned.

NYMag extrapolates “What to Expect at Rio’s Budget Friendly Olympics Opening Ceremony“:

… “I hope that the opening ceremony will be a drug for depression in Brazil,” said City of God director Fernando Meirelles, who, along with filmmakers Daniela Thomas and Andrucha Waddington, is directing the event. But he was sure to note that, thanks to Brazil’s recession, things are being done on the cheap. “We were looking at a budget of 113.9 million U.S. dollars for the four ceremonies — opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But now our budget is 55.9 million U.S. dollars for four ceremonies. Most of this money is for security, and all the stuff around the show. I think it is 12 times less than London, 20 times less than Beijing. This makes it very challenging … You lose ideas, you lose toys, where you had 3,000 people you now have 200,” he explained. “On the other hand, it is good in some way because we are in a moment in the world where we need to be reasonable with the way we spend money.”…

The identity of the person who transfers the Olympic flame from the torch to the cauldron is officially a secret, but all signs point to Brazil’s most beloved athlete, the now 75-year-old soccer star Pelé…

NYMag‘s Vulture blog also has “A Day-by-Day Schedule of the 2016 Rio Olympics” here.

Who’s gonna be watching the Opening Ceremony, at least?

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  8. 8.

    Trentrunner

    God, I’m not looking forward to the over-commentating cultural-stereotyping happytalk horseshit that NBC will ladle over the ceremonies like syrup. It’s like Chuck Woolery doing a commentary on the very great but unsparing and hard-to-watch movie City of God*.

    *The director of which directed tonight’s opening ceremony.

  12. 12.

    satby

    @Trentrunner: I used to enjoy the Olympics until NBC started doing all the stupid commentary and background stories, which they fit in by constantly cutting away from the games. Haven’t watched in years as a result.

  14. 14.

    Capri

    How does a mainly female audience square with showing every second of women’s beach volleyball but an edited few games of regular women’s volleyball?

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    I’m not a sports person much, and especially not a fan of the ceremonies, so it’s probably audiobooks for me.

  20. 20.

    patroclus

    It was 50 years ago today that MLK had a huge march in Chicago’s SouthWest Side for Fair Housing. All the marchers dressed up in suits and ties (imagine that happening today!) in order to distinguish between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” and in order to avoid getting beaten by the Chicago cops, who, a mere two years later, “made their bones” on some hippies. This ultimately led to the passage of the Fair Housing Act.

    But, you know, remembering that in light of the YOOOOGE and ongoing Clinton e-mail controversy seems unlikely.

  23. 23.

    satby

    @Baud: True: more dicks than an international Richard convention, more tits than the biggest herd of milk cows ever. Granted, none in prime Olympic shape.

  24. 24.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Baud: No I mean they always seem scantily clad.

    Mine was spelled wrong but I fixed it. But that had nothing to do with it.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne

    Count me as another woman who used to watch the Olympics but was driven away by the relentless focus on “biographies” and tearjerkers over GETTING TO WATCH THE GODDAMNED GAME (or routine, since I also like gymnastics).

    Oh, and the US microfocus got too much for me, too. One of the great things about the Olympics is getting to see and root for top athletes from other countries, but not on frickin’ NBC.

  26. 26.

    ? Martin

    The online streaming events where NBC doesn’t do the human interest stuff is always the most interesting. They still have commentary but it’s the last few folks that competed for the US and they provide very relevant, subdued commentary. Archery and handball is where it’s at, folks. Bet half of you didn’t even know handball was a sport.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @? Martin:

    I’m interested in watching women’s fencing because of the human interest story, but I would rather watch the actual event than NBC’s syrupy “documentary” package with 5 minutes of the actual match.

  31. 31.

    satby

    @patroclus: That march has a special place in my family lore: my uncle was the watch commander of the police unit protecting the marchers. His bumpkin second cousins showed up with a few other rednecks to cause trouble, and my uncle overheard one cousin say to the group “look, we got nothing to worry about, the copper in charge is my cousin”.

    So my uncle had them arrested and thrown into the wagon as soon as the march started.

    It still was an ugly scene, because it was through Marquette Park, home of the Chicago Nazi party.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    Less than zero interest in any sports event.

    Speaking of TCM, in light of institutional changes to the military in recent years, someone had tongue firmly in cheek with the description on their website for the Big Lift, airing on Saturday,

    “Two Air Force sergeants find love while flying the Berlin Airlift.”

    Cue Mr. Takei: Oh, my.

  33. 33.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I was around a lot of people from Brazil for several years because one of my closest friends was into Capoeira. I’ve never seen a group of people who routinely wear so little clothing.

    Great parties though. Well not “though”, great parties in addition to. In fact, because of.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    Unsurprisingly, the NBC site is not saying when they will be broadcasting live. My local listing says everything is live, which can’t be true. I’m not in the mood for delayed, heavily edited coverage. Does anyone know when the live stuff (other than opening/closing) is scheduled?

  36. 36.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Do you guys think the Olympics will help Hillary cement her lead? If we lose 14 days of the remaining 95 to sports, and what we saw of Trump before that served to highlight his knuckleheadedness, shouldn’t that make his challenge to reboot/redefine his narrative that much more dodgy?

  37. 37.

    Roger Moore

    It’s not as though the viewing audience has changed over the past 20 years, at least not as far as NBC is concerned.

    It’s not just a change in the viewing audience; it’s a change in how we get information. NBC is trying to pretend The Web never happened. 20 years ago, it was hard to get information outside major media and easy to avoid learning about the outcome of an event if you didn’t want it spoiled. Now we don’t depend on major media for information, and people have to put spoiler warnings so anyone has a chance of not having things spoiled for them.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    @Shalimar:
    The most recent photo I saw of Diego Maradona was on an advertisement in a train station here in KL, about a year ago. He and his Indian business partner were dressed in white homespun cloth, and they were selling jewellery. Those ads have since come down, and I’ve heard nothing more about that business venture.

  40. 40.

    RoonieRoo

    I used to look forward to the Olympics but this year I will watch none of it for the first time. NBC has pretty much destroyed any joy for watching it with the excessive USA only crap, the fact that they refuse to actually show the sporting event and the gawd awful commentary.

    Add to that the human rights abuses that are now a mainstay of any country that is the host country and the greed and corruption of the IOC itself and I don’t understand how anybody can stomach the olympics.

  43. 43.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’ve got news for the shitweasels at NBC: I won’t be watching. And fuck all of you royally.

  44. 44.

    Elmo

    The bloom came off the Olympic rose for me with the growing acknowledgement that the IOC is hopelessly, totally, unreservedly corrupt, and that the venue is mostly enriching a select few. I didn’t watch any of the Sochi Games because I couldn’t get over the idea that a Black Sea resort was going to pretend to be Innsbruck for two weeks.

    I know a few Olympic athletes from living in a world-class ski resort town, which doubles as a high-altitude training center. So I wish I didn’t have this awful cynical ennui about the whole thing, but I can’t help it.

  47. 47.

    Gin & Tonic

    @? Martin:

    Bet half of you didn’t even know handball was a sport.

    Hell, I grew up in New York, of course I knew handball is a sport.

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Hell, I grew up in New York, of course I knew handball is a sport.

    Different handball. The Olympic sport is team handball (i.e. like lacrosse without sticks) rather than handball (i.e. like racquetball without the racquet).

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @satby: That’s exactly when and why I quit watching the olympics! We must not be the female audience they are looking for.

  52. 52.

    Feathers

    I’m watching. I always have. Got rid of cable, so all I’m going to have is the over the air NBC broadcasts without Tivo to pause and fast-forward. We’ll see how long I last. I have a lot of paper sorting and purging to get through, which is the perfect Olympic activity, so it will really be more of a radio experience.

    Does anyone else miss the ABC broadcasts from the 70s? I loved the around the world stuff, Up Close and Personal IIRC, seeing what people’s houses were like in Norway, Japan, and Australia. The training wasn’t as interesting as just seeing their kitchens. The death of communism has a lot to answer for.

  55. 55.

    debbie

    @satby:

    Actually, blame that on ABC and Jim McKay. “Up close and personal…” Very annoying, but I try watching around them.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: NBC has clearly not recognized the cultural shift in the years since the last olympics – they may have gotten away with 4-hour delays 4 years ago, but people are used to live streaming and will surely be less tolerant of arbitrary delays.

    NBC: we’re delaying you for hours because we think we know what you want. You want us filtering the way you see things.

    Most of us: No. No, we don’t.

  58. 58.

    Kelly

    Trump has realized he has no chance of medaling with any conventional 10 meter dive. He’s going to try win the gold with the most explosive belly flop ever seen.

    No honestly I love the diving. Only pay attention every four years but wow!

  61. 61.

    median

    @RoonieRoo: I’m with you. I’m watching the Olympics almost exclusively through a subreddit committed to documenting the atrocities.

    The strange thing is, the news about Brazil and the Olympics is way more interesting than the sporting event. But NBC isn’t going to report on that, because they have a vested interest in making the Olympics a happy funtime event.

    But, even short of the specifics of Brazil, the IOC is a criminal organization with legal immunity because everyone wants the opportunity to pour money into their pockets every four years. The world, I do not understand it.

  62. 62.

    ThresherK

    Hey, it’s all the people from Today whom I avoid like the plague!

    I’m trying to put this on a scale, like “What level Thanksgiving Day parade is this?”

    I’ll sit through some TV crap to see the Macy’s parade, but the Disney one is strictly immobilized on the couch and the batteries fell out of the remote two feet beyond reach.

  63. 63.

    JKC

    So Bob Costas has been released from his cryogenic chamber again, and Matt Lauer and the gang are doing a nighttime version of the Today Show. Any broadcast of actual sporting events will be completely accidental.

  64. 64.

    redshirt

    Can someone who is watching give this thread a heads up if something interesting is happening? I just turned it on and watched 3 minutes of commercials and said enough.

  65. 65.

    raven

    I’ve been to two Olympics in person and will enjoy this even though there are problems with the broadcast. My only regret is that I’m having hernia surgery the day after it ends, it would have been great to lay up and watch.

  66. 66.

    Feathers

    It just started. This is my vote for Mary Carillo running the whole show.

    Also, my sister and her family are in Rio for the games. I think they’ve been to almost all the ones since Atlanta except when she was pregnant. I’ll update if she sends news.

  67. 67.

    lamh36

    So #nbcolympics is showing 5 min segments of the damn opening ceremony then 1-2 min of commercials…this is gonna get old quick #Rio2016

    Oh and they started with a damn 1 hour delay…1 hour behind…what’s the point of having the games in a country with a closer time zone to our…ugh

  70. 70.

    Tripod

    Venn overlay: Sports that I’m interested in, where the Olympics is a primary competition. Women’s soccer and uh…

  73. 73.

    JMG

    The opening ceremony need not be live. It’s a pageant followed by a real dull (not for the people in it!) parade. But NBC is doomed. ESPN is posting Twitter spoilers on its home page. The idea that people will pay for streaming they can get elsewhere for free with a little effort is delusional. Once again I make this plea to Clinton. Promise you’ll fight to make a la carte cable a law. Use antitrust against Comcast, Time Warner, etc. Approval of those moves would be over 90 percent.

  74. 74.

    raven

    If you are not already all fucking cranky about the Olympics this should help

    The Brazilian Town Where the American Confederacy Lives On

    Gomes had joined some 2,000 Brazilians at the annual festa of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, the brotherhood of Confederate descendants in Brazil, on a plot near the town of Americana, which was settled by Southern defectors 150 years ago. The graveyard is usually empty save for its caretaker or the odd worshipper drawn to its little brick chapel. On the April morning of the festa, a public-address system blaring the Confederate battle song “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” had interrupted the cemetery’s silence. Brazilians in ten-gallon hats and leather jackets called out greetings.

  75. 75.

    lamh36

    #NBC delayed #Rio2016 1 fuq’n hour for that type of in depth analysis
    “Immigration has begun…” talking about explorers

  76. 76.

    hovercraft

    “Unstable Hillary Clinton, lacks the judgement , temperament and moral character to lead this country, she’s a dangerous liar, she’s pretty close to unhinged and you’ve seen it a couple of times, but people in the background know it close to her know it…… proves that she is totally unfit.”
    This is a ‘hard hitting statement from Trump’ according to the media. Trump has decided to go after her hard.
    So who is this aimed at? For anyone not already with him, who believes this crap? Just ’cause you say it does not make it so, point to one incident of her being unhinged.

    EDIT: As Mr Mack said he had that written down, so someone or some people in his camp thought/think this is an effective line of attack.
    SAD!!!

  77. 77.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @hovercraft:

    He’s projecting onto her what everyone has been saying about him all week. I don’t know who he thinks he’s kidding other than himself. Classic malignant narcissist.

  81. 81.

    lamh36

    How much you wanna bet NBC blurs out or cuts away from any bare butts fro Carnivale dancers.
    #Rio2016

  82. 82.

    hovercraft

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:
    Chucky and the other beltway hacks have been saying that since he watches cable news all the time, he is seeing Hillary’s commercials and they are driving him nuts, which was why he was re-litigating all the stuff in the ad with the kids this week (Megan Kelly, disabled reporter, etc), so he probably say the new ad with republicans saying he is not fit to be CiC and hit the roof. So maybe they wrote this down for him as a way to let him let off steam saying things that are laughable but not insane. Maybe? If anyone other than Trump thinks this is convincing to anyone, then they too are insane.
    At this point he just needs to be locked in a room with the TV on the game show network, with no phone or remote control.

  83. 83.

    lamh36

    I’m betting Trump camp plan to use the Olympic coverage as a “reset” to get Trump out of the news.

    I know he like to be in the news, but I’m betting the rest of his camp does NOT…so unless he says something REALLY outrageous…Rio is a blessing

  85. 85.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lamh36: Trump dies inside every moment people are not paying attention to him, so I imagine staying out of the media will be tough.

  86. 86.

    hovercraft

    @lamh36:
    The camp may be but can the candidate tolerate not being the center of attention for two weeks? Inquiring minds want to know.

  87. 87.

    Saskexpat

    I still like the Olympics even though the IOC’s corruption makes a banana republic look on the level. I am excited because I get to watch live Canadian coverage, no smug Costas, and at least some attention paid to countries other than the US. Favorite team outfits so far is Cameroon and the Marshall Islands.

  88. 88.

    redshirt

    I sincerely like the march of athletes.

    I can feel the effort, time, and sweat that each of these people have put into getting into this parade.

  90. 90.

    PVDMichael

    @JMG: I agree that the opening ceremonies needn’t be shown live, but…

    “A really dull parade”?

    Come on.. The outfits… The excitement leading up to the final host country.. The gymnastics the organizers do to keep Iran from marching near Israel.. The moments of humanity (both Koreas marching under the same flag… The excitement of kids knowing they are being seen back at home … NBC’s cheesy country Uzbekistan trivia…

    The parade is amazeballs.

  91. 91.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Nerdy Wonka
    ‏@NerdyWonka

    Slavery, racism, classism, globalization, cultural history, climate change, etc.

    Bravo on keeping it real!

    #Rio2016 #OpeningCeremony

  93. 93.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Mnemosyne: If you want to watch fencing, sub the FIE and USFA on YouTube. Great matches without drowning in NBC’s treacle. Of course you won’t find the Olympics there, but Olympic fencing is less important than the World’s anyway.

  94. 94.

    raven

    When the average American hears about handball, they think of the sport offered at their local YMCA. But for the rest of the world, handball is a competitive Olympic sport and it’s about to take Rio by storm this summer. Despite the fact that the United States hasn’t fielded a handball team at the Olympics since 1996, the sport is growing in America. Watch the video above to see some of the members of the Boston Team Handball Club, who speak about the game, its origins and its growth in the United States.

    Read more at: http://nesn.com/2016/08/olympic-handball-is-the-most-intense-sport-you-must-watch-this-summer/

  95. 95.

    lamh36

    I admit, I like to see the nations with “traditonal” garb instead of the designer duds.
    #Rio2016

  96. 96.

    Saskexpat

    Trying to decide which continent has better outfits – Oceania or Africa. Both regions’ countries have had a nice mix of modern and traditional.

  97. 97.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    I don’t think the name of the color of those Barbados team jackets has been invented yet. Best.uniforms.ever.

  98. 98.

    PVDMichael

    I hope the camera catches Iptihaj Muhammad (the Muslim American fencer who wears the hijab) just to make some heads explode. I also hope she’s having a great time.

  102. 102.

    J R in WV

    Well, the opening ceremony was interesting, it was on just as I finished making dinner. The ratio of “show” to commercial appears to be pretty bad… 2:1 or so. After a very few minutes and 3 or 4o commercial breaks we shut it down.

    Mrs J is watching reruns of some detective/crime show, Bones maybe. Pretty bad job NBC if years old detective show is better than the Olympics on your watch.

    And of course the venal corruption of the IOC, all “aristocrats” who need more money to keep up their aristocratic bubble. I thought it was pretty funny when the Salt Lake organizers got busted for paying bribes… and the IOC for soliciting and taking them. Why are these “aristocratic” thieves still allowed to run that organization?

    And they all got to be aristocrats because their forefathers were oppressive murdering thieves on a grand scale, or assisted those on that mission. Stealing from farmers to feed their armies, killing everyone they could… and now they’re “aristocrats”… yeah. So they are. Villago Delenda Est, indeed.

  105. 105.

    pseudonymous in nc

    “Context” = commercials. Plus commercials. And commercials.

    No other broadcaster in the developed world does this. A friend of mine is over in the US and had never seen the NBClympics before and said that Americans deserve Trump for it. Which is harsh, but he has a point.

    @J R in WV:

    And of course the venal corruption of the IOC, all “aristocrats” who need more money to keep up their aristocratic bubble.

    As another friend (who was involved in London 2012) said today, the thing about the Olympics is that not even the IOC can totally fuck it up.

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