Fireworks are tested for the opening ceremony of the #Rio2016 #Olympics, Maracana stadium, Rio pic.twitter.com/TU67lTS8G4
— Derek Momodu (@DelMody) August 4, 2016
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?
Sports Open Thread: Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony This EveningPost + Comments (105)