We'll watch how we want to

Posted Sunday, August 10, 2008 at 8:02 a.m. by Chris Amico in News about beijing, China, media and olympics

I'm watching the Olympics right now. I've been watching since early Friday morning, on TV and online, with and without the help of NBC.

The network has been the sole broadcaster of the Olympics as long as I've been watching television, but that monopoly is clearly ebbing. Yesterday morning, while I was sitting through an insufferable pre-taped Today show (summary: Isn't China weird?!?), my friends back in China were watching the opening ceremonies in Beijing live and telling me all about it over Twitter. Meanwhile, others were doing whatever they could to get around NBC's waiting game:

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites. In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream. As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic — or so irrelevant.

This may be the first distributed Olympics, or Olympics 2.0, or Long Tail Olympics. Whatever name sticks, fans and followers have never had more control over programming or the conversation.

Because we're not just watching. This is the Beijing Olympics, and there's plenty to talk about. Check out the Beijing Olympics room on FriendFeed, set up by Chad Catacchio, for a quick overview of everywhere the dialog is going. I'll be posting links there and on Twitter, and maybe even a few updates here.

More places to watch and talk:

CN Reviews also has a great list of where to find streaming video.

In the Bay Area:

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