Sports

NBC Will Broadcast Olympics Opening Ceremony With 1-Hour Delay In Order to “Curate” Coverage

The Rio Olympics opening ceremony will take place on August 5, only you won’t get to watch it until an hour after it starts. At a press conference Tuesday, NBC said they will broadcast the ceremony at 8 p.m., even though the opening ceremony in Rio begins at 7 p.m.

NBC Sports chairman Mark Lazarus also said ceremonies will not be streamed live.

“We think it’s important to give the context to the show. These Opening Ceremonies will be a celebration of Brazilian culture, of Rio, of the pageantry, of the excitement, of the flair that this beautiful nation has. We think it’s important that we’re able to put that in context for the viewer so that it’s not just a flash of color. So we will air that on a one-hour delay.”

NBC Olympics executive producer Jim Bell made the official decision to not broadcast the event live. “First of all, it’s not a sports competition, it’s a ceremony that requires deep levels of understanding all the various camera angles and meanings for the host country, and our commentary laid over it,” Bell said. “Plus, again, we talked about prime time being important. It is still when most people can watch. I can’t speak for anybody here, but I think that for most people, it’s fair to say that after 8 o’clock is a time when most people can watch TV.”

It’s worth noting NBC has not aired a live Summer Olympics opening ceremony since the 1996 Olympics were held in Atlanta, Georgia.

As expected, Twitter went in on NBC.