19 Comments Add your own

• 1. Olsen Ebright  |  August 12th, 2008 at 1:45 am

  No question. Post it. Time delayed is how my parents watch television. Mark it. The people upset about time-delayed news will die soon. Am I wrong? The Internet is now. The people who look for news on the Internet get it now. What’s the rationale that anything online would deserve time delay? Somebody, please, pretty please, tell me something differently.

• 2. Kerry  |  August 12th, 2008 at 1:58 am

  The Internet is a single timezone. Waiting to post news is a very old-media methodology. If the Internet becomes old-media, what becomes the new media?

• 3. Rico Suave  |  August 12th, 2008 at 5:46 am

  How hard is it to do “click here for total Olympic coverage?” It’s posted, but the spoilers are hidden.

• 4. Rico Suave  |  August 12th, 2008 at 5:48 am

  and another thing!

  If we’re a single time zone now, why not run live coverage overnight and then replay it during prime time? The hard-core equestrian fans can watch their sport live, but then the mainstreamers can get their 15-minute update between Michael Phelps interviews….

• 5. papergirl  |  August 12th, 2008 at 7:15 am

  If you’re on the Web looking for news you want it now. If you’re not, then you won’t know, will you? And I also agree with Rico Sauve - live events (equestrian totally!) overnight and prime-time packaging.

• 6. Safran  |  August 12th, 2008 at 7:18 am

  That ship has sailed. How clueless do you look that your site is the only one that won’t post until it’s sorta-live your time? No no no, a thousand times no. People know that they’re going to get up-to-the-minute information news from the Web. If they want to cover their ears and play “la la la I’m not listening” don’t go online, don’t watch the news, and just watch the TV show.

  And doesn’t the local news say “Some Olympics news now, so if you don’t want to hear it - turn away for a moment”?

  Second: OMG - did the LA Times just compare the Olympics to American Frickin’ Idol?

  Here’s the warning they want: WARNING: THE LA TIMES WANTS THE EVENTS TO RUN SO LATE THAT YOU HAVE TO PICK UP THE PAPER IN THE MORNING TO GET THE RESULTS THAT NOBODY WOULD POST ON THEIR SITES.

• 7. JT  |  August 12th, 2008 at 7:55 am

  The LA Times is complaining? Maybe they need to fire another editor/publisher. What numbnuts decided to hold the olympic results when they’re already available to everyone else IN THE WORLD.

  Also… American Idol vs. Olympics. I’d say the two are hardly comparable.

• 8. laurie  |  August 12th, 2008 at 8:35 am

  i just picked up today’s local newspaper in the breakroom at work with a huge picture of michael phelps on the front page of the sports section saying that he won his 2nd gold medal, when everyone (??) knows he won another one last night in primetime. why bother even publishing that story when it’s out of date before you go to print?

  if you want olympic news, you go online to find out immediately, you watch primetime to actually see it happen (even if it’s tape delayed) and you read the paper to remind you of how things were yesterday.

• 9. discreet_chaos  |  August 12th, 2008 at 9:14 am

  I have to agree with most everyone else; The Olympics are covered by a myriad of sources and there’s no way to get everyone to embargo the info. If the LATimes wants to put their coverage under a click, they may be able to hype it as a “service” and maybe keep a couple of people confined to their site, but between the legitimate sites and the blogosphere, there’s really no way to keep a lid on the results.

  Also, in this day and age, why are live events tape-delayed, anyhow? Why aren’t the West Coast stations simply carrying it live and running “Judge Judy” after the coverage? We don’t tape-delay the “State of the Union” or the “Oscars”, so why are the Olympics treated differently?

• 10. tdc  |  August 12th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

  america has won the gold in stupidity with all this tape delay stuff.

• 11. Brink  |  August 12th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

  News is news.

  If you’re going to post it, don’t play games, just post it.

• 12. tdc  |  August 12th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

  great tv myth: “online doesn’t cannibalize our audience, it’s additive”.

  then why the F tape-delay ANYTHING?

• 13. Cory Bergman  |  August 12th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

  The issue here isn’t whether or not you’d post it, but HOW you’d post it.

  Instead of, “Phelps wins third gold,” you’d post a headline that says something like, “Phelps tries for third gold. Results inside.”

  Keep in mind, people aren’t going to news sites to find out if Phelps won, they’re going as part of a routine to see what’s in the news. So I think there’s a real case here not to spoil the big delayed Olympic stories with obvious headlines.

• 14. discreet_chaos  |  August 12th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

  Cory: That may work on the West Coast with traditional media and be a “service” to their readers/viewers, but why should the NYTimes, Yahoo!, bloggers or a television station out of Scranton tailor their coverage to “protect” the NBC franchise and the half-dozen people in California who don’t already know?

  And, if you flip the scenario and if Phelps somehow doesn’t win one of the races: Is an East Coast outlet supposed to sit on a n “Agony of Defeat” photo headline until after NBC broadcasts the race in Hawaii?

• 15. Cory Bergman  |  August 12th, 2008 at 10:20 pm

  That’s the counter argument, which most national online news organizations have chosen to follow, since the majority of the U.S. population is in the East.

  Most of the local TV sites in the West, however, are either writing vague headlines or holding the stories altogether.

• 16. Anonymous  |  August 13th, 2008 at 3:28 am

  Safran–According to my calculations, China -12 MDT.

  Yes, I heard KTVB.com had Kristin Anderson’s race live…they were probably the ONLY ones with that video. Somebody said WMP feeds were available and apparently that was horsehockey.

  Any spoiling to be had is better than this farce.

  KTVB doesn’t say turn your head anymore and they seem to have had a sarcastic, resigned attitude about the first days of the thing…at least until after the stabbing occured and everyone started realizing this was the Edsel Show of Sports and focused on high school and college football coming up.

  I you want to see Olympic action, watch the local news. The daytime coverage has so many ads you immediately realize that they spent BILLION$ and they’re trying to SURVIVE this.

  Fake fireworks, fake little girl singing (real one wasn’t CUTE, China said), fake Teenage Mutant Nymphet Gymnasts, fake etiquette, fake prosperity, fake smog control. Actual athletes. Poor kids.

• 17. Brink  |  August 13th, 2008 at 4:20 am

  “spoil the big delayed Olympic stories with obvious headlines.”

  News is news. it is not our job to not “spoil” a TV network’s broadcast.

  “Jones could be guilty of murder. Click here to find out.”

  Yeah, let’s use the TV-Tease model for the website, too.

• 18. Anonymous  |  August 13th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

  Why not? Yahoo! uses it on the front page a lot and bloggers use the “follow the jump for the rest of the story” method.

• 19. Beth  |  August 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am

  The news on the internet should be now, but at least give a headline that doesn’t ruin it. Such as: “Olympic Results”. Then anyone who wants to know what happened the night before and see pics could click on the link - everyone else could skip and watch the Olympics that night without results being spoiled. Is that so hard.

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