This week, NBC got into a little bit of trouble for broadcasting its prime-time Olympics coverage with a stamp that said "Live" -- even on the West Coast, where the Games are actually shown with a three-hour tape delay. Which meant that anyone in the Pacific Time Zone who glanced at the Internet during those broadcasts would likely have found large headlines announcing the results of events they hadn't seen yet. Then the network responded to this criticism by saying, in essence, that anyone who actually believed that the broadcasts were live is an idiot. Nice!
But this is hardly the only instance in which supposedly "live" events are held hostage for three hours on the West Coast in order to fit the networks' own scheduling requirements. Here are five others that a third of the country doesn't get to see until the fun has stopped, the results are in and the excitement has all died down:
1. The Emmys and the Grammys. In fact, virtually all awards shows, other than the Oscars, are held back for broadcast until "prime time" on Western channels -- by which point the actual events are long over, and the winners are already getting plastered at post-show parties. In Los Angeles, this is true even when you live two blocks away from where the parties are being held.
2. Saturday Night Live. Except it's not, in enormous areas of the country. This doesn't matter so much, normally -- most of the time, the "live" aspect of the show just means that the cameras will keep rolling when a player starts giggling uncontrollably at his own joke. But it also allows the network to censor certain things before they get to the delayed broadcast -- such as Ashlee Simpson's botched lip-synching performance, the sound for which was edited out of the West Coast feed. Although how doing so was supposed to put that particular cork back in the bottle is anybody's guess.
3. Jimmy Kimmel Live! Okay, this one kind of hurts. Kimmel is the only late-night comedian who does a live show, and he does it right on Hollywood Boulevard. The Hollywood streetscape is as much a part of his program as midtown Manhattan is for David Letterman's. And yet, once again, the "live" doesn't mean anything in the place where the show is actually filmed.
4. Reality-show finales. The winners of such shows as Survivor, American Idol and Dancing With the Stars are announced live to build excitement. Except you-know-where. And if you happen to catch the winner's name before the delayed Western broadcast -- on the Internet, the radio or even a cable entertainment show -- that's an entire season of viewing spoiled.
5. The evening news. Yes, even the network news is three hours old when it's broadcast to the West. Unless some huge event requiring a "special report" occurs after 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Katie, Brian and Charlie are already home snoozing in their easy chairs by the time their take on world events is being served up like a reheated pizza. Residents of Los Angeles and San Francisco often complain that the network news bureaus, all of which are based in New York, skimp on reporting from beyond the East Coast -- but whether or not that's true, they certainly don't bother keeping the updates up-to-date.
By the way, there could be a simple solution to all this, at least for viewers who get their signals through the big national satellite and cable companies: Let them watch the East Coast TV stations. The channels are already there in the system; in most cases they're just blocked. Unfortunately, local stations like it that way -- they don't want you watching the same shows on a different coast's channels, with someone else's commercials. So even though viewers in Oregon technically could watch the Olympics on, say, New York's WNBC, in reality they aren't allowed to.
And until that situation changes, enjoy your stale Olympics, Westies!
Image: Los Angeles Times
Previously:
The Summer Olympics: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide