It Isn't Live, it's NBC

For those of you whose feet land inside the overlapping circles of sports and Twitter, it's not news that NBC's time-shifted coverage of the Summer Olympics was under a constant assault from the moment the opening ceremony began (which was different for all of the U.S. depending on which time zone you lived in). The hashtag #NBCFail provided a narcotics grade stream of the bile.​

I didn't mind that NBC time-shifted coverage of key events to primetime. Tens of millions of American viewers​ had to be at work when many of these events were occurring in London. NBC paid $1.2 billion for the rights to this Summer Olympics, and they weren't going to cover that with ad revenue from airing events at 1pm on a Wednesday. They're not a charity.

​However, the lack of a live broadcast with commentary on some of NBC's alternate channels, like the NBC Sports Network, was disappointing. I tried using the NBC Olympics iPad app to stream things live, but the interface was confusing. Music and film festivals with dozens of concurrent shows have converged on a simple side by side bar chart schedule format (example) to help attendees plot out a plan of attack. I had a terrible time figuring out when events would be broadcast live on the NBC Olympics app, and I ended up missing several.

Despite what was likely a minimal audience for the live streams, NBC insisted on trying to squeeze every last cent out of the live streams by randomly injecting video ads. The problem with live streams is finding the right moments to insert video ads. Without someone manning it live, it's impossible to do without interrupting the action. At Hulu we only put a pre-roll ad on live streams, we passed on monetizing with video ads during the stream because we didn't want to interrupt a key moment.​ NBC had no such qualms, and it seemed like a video ad would cut in roughly every minute to minute and a half, regardless of what was happening. Combined with the fact that much of the live broadcast footage had no commentary, the live streams were often  unwatchable.

Bob Costas is known for his even-keeled eloquence (and for his Dorian Gray-like ability to defy visible aging, even in this HD-age)​. But this Olympics, every time an event ended and they cut to Costas for his wrap-up of the event we just saw, I fast-forwarded through his commentary. These athletic feats being aired many hours after the fact, I no longer needed him to put them into context. Hours of live discussion on the internet had already done the job. After a swimmer would win a race, NBC would quickly cut to an interview with the American winners poolside, much faster than would be possible if the event were being taped lived. The effect was of a jump cut, emphasizing just how outdated the coverage was.

On the last day of competition, despite coverage that was already tape-delayed several hours on the West coast, the NBC primetime coverage began with an hour long segment on WWII. Announcers pretended to broadcast the event live, even as the occasional verb tense slipups gave away the charade.​ To watch NBC's best coverage of an event, you had to stay up until midnight each night on the West coast, even though the coverage being aired was already itself tape delayed by half a day. It's bizarre that someone wanting to watch a sporting event live would be a second class citizen to those watching on tape delay, but that's the decision NBC made for arguably the biggest sporting event it will cover all year (notably, for events like Wimbledon, NBC does not bother tape delaying the broadcast).

I love Kottke, but I can't agree with him when he says about whether or not tape-delaying most of the Olympics is a problem: "it's not, get over it". In his post he cites a psych study that says spoiling movie and book plots improves enjoyment of those books and movies. ​

Without a doubt, you can know the route ahead and yet still enjoy the journey. Plenty of Hitchcock movies demonstrated that a mystery need not end with the reveal of the villain. A movie like Dial M For Murder reveals the villain and his plot from the start, and the enjoyment is in seeing how the detective deduces what you already know.​ Reading reviews of restaurants or movies can heighten anticipation for the experience, enhancing your enjoyment once you're in your seat.

But I'm still skeptical of the psych study. As a thought exercise: let's suppose I can tell you the exact outcome, play by play, of every sporting event that will occur for the rest of your life. Say I can tell you, before you walk in the movie theater, the exact plot of the movie (even twist-driven movies like Sixth Sense). Do I think you'd still enjoy watching them? Sure. But do I think you'd enjoy them more if you didn't know the outcome beforehand? Without a doubt.​

So despite the usual impressive array of camera angles, the biggest sporting event on the globe was reduced by NBC's coverage to something that felt smaller and flatter than it should be. While much of the world's communication has shifted to asynchronous channels (texting, blogging, FB status updates, Twitter, email, watching DVDs on your sofa), some things still are most magical when the world locks onto one clock. In this time-shifted age, sports is one of the last bastions of activity able to seize all the eyes of the world as it unfolds live, in real-time.​

It could have been magical. And it was. But not now. About 8 hours ago.

The economics of the McRib

If you can demonstrate that McDonald’s only introduces the sandwich when pork prices are lower than usual, then you’re but a couple logical steps from concluding that McDonald’s is essentially exploiting a market imbalance between what normal food producers are willing to pay for hog meat at certain times of the year, and what Americans are willing to pay for it once it is processed, molded into illogically anatomical shapes, and slathered in HFCS-rich BBQ sauce.

Fascinating analysis that concludes that the McRib is simply an attempt at commodities arbitrage by McDonalds.

I haven't had a McRib since I was in grade school. I suspect that if I tried one now, I would not enjoy it as much as I did then, but it's no cause for mourning.

For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.

James Wood cites that passage from Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse in a broad-reaching, thought-provoking contemplation of secularism in this week's New Yorker. In the scene above, Lily Briscoe mourns her late friend Mrs. Ramsay while sitting with her friend Augustus.

Another passage of note: Wood cites the novelist Julian Barnes as saying he didn't believe in God but missed him all the same. Wood notes that more the charter given to new secularism is not just to deny religion but to fill the spiritual void left behind in its absence.

Nothing wraps up neatly with a bow here, but Wood writes with the urgency of someone grappling with his own Lily Briscoe moments. When he cites Philip Larkin's description of life being "first boredom, then fear", it's clear which phase of life he is experiencing himself.

Why a broken leg for a horse is almost always fatal

I've one of those people who've always wondered why a broken leg, which humans can recover from easily, is so devastating for a horse. The Guardian UK comes along with a clear explanation as to why.

Why Amazon wins

Okay, not an exhaustive list, there are many many reasons. But as with other great companies, it's often the negative experiences with their competitors that highlight their strengths.

I've bought a lot of items from The Impossible Project, a company started by some ex-Polaroid employees to try to continue producing instant film for traditional Polaroid cameras. I own a few Polaroid cameras, I love the beautiful-ugly analog quality of the photos they produce (even after it was co-opted by hipster culture), and I was thrilled that someone would fight to keep the film in production.

In the craziness of moving to a new city and starting a company, I lost track of one order I placed with The Impossible Project for two small items. It popped into my head the other day like random things often do, in that "Remembrances of Things Past" way, and I realized I'd never received the items. I went online to check the shipping status, and it was marked as delivered to our office a few weeks ago.

I wrote in to report the shipment missing, and a customer service replied that the company was in an awkward position because the shipment was reported as delivered, so the best they could do is give me a store credit for the price of the shipment less shipping.

A totally fair and reasonable offer. But from my perspective, I'm now down the shipping cost on that order, and it makes me a bit sad to feel distrusted.

This is after ordering a lot of their early test films, some of which came from failed test batches that produced unusable photos. To their credit, they offered ways to ship back the bad film to get replacement film, but the overhead of packaging and shipping up defective products is its own hassle and cost, and I'm almost certain there are some lemons among the batches of film I purcased from them but haven't used yet. I don't mind supporting small companies that are trying to do good things, and the internet and web have created an entire class of entitled, self-important customers who feel aggrieved even when free products don't serve their every whim. But The Impossible Project's products aren't cheap, and I've spent a lot of money with them, so this botched transaction with them feels like a cold reality check about my importance as a customer.

But perhaps it's just Amazon that's spoiled me. I've never had Amazon question any order I've reported as missing. Amazon will ship a replacement order for any damaged or missing item, no questions asked. Once, I reported an order for a DVD as not having been delivered and so they shipped me a replacement immediately. Then the original shipment finally showed up a week later, and now I had two copies of the same product, so I emailed them and asked if they wanted the original back. They said it was okay, just keep them both and save yourself the hassle of shipping the original back.

Amazon competes for your business for life, while other companies compete transaction to transaction. When I hit the 1-click order button at Amazon.com (and I do that a lot, at least twice a week), I do so with zero doubt that I'll get anything less than full satisfaction.

When I was at Amazon.com, the whole company was fixated on eliminating two of the most severe psychological roadblocks to ordering online: paying for shipping and worrying about the cost/hassle if the shipment went bad for some reason. They've effectively cut both of those issues down to size, the former with Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime, and the second with their "no questions asked" return/replacement/exchange policies.

And that is why for millions of customers, Amazon.com evolved from a convenient way to shop for long tail items to the preferred way to purchase anything and everything.