Olympics: Missy Franklin victory spoiled by NBC
NBC has been taking heat for its time-delayed Olympic coverage (there’s even a parody Twitter). But never did viewers think that in addition to avoiding the Internet, they would need to avoid NBC’s own coverage of the games.
Last night, minutes before airing Missy Franklin’s time-delayed victory in the 100-meter backstroke, NBC ran a promo for Tuesday morning’s Today show that announced, “When you’re 17 years old and win your first gold medal, there’s nobody you’d rather share it with,” and showed footage of Franklin standing on the medal stand with her gold medal, as well as reuniting with her parents, effectively ruining the suspense for viewers.
But despite audience frustrations with spoilers (and mounting complaints on social media), the delayed events haven’t hurt numbers for the network. NBC’s first three days of coverage averaged 35.8 million viewers — the most-watched weekend in Summer Olympics history.
EW reached out to a rep for NBC. As of press time, they did not respond to a request for comment.
Read more:
Comments