In addition to not airing events live to people on the West Coast, the network has made some downright bizarre decisions about what events to stream online at NBCOlympics.com. Fortunately, the Men's Hockey Semifinals between the USA and Finland will be streaming live today at 3:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. PST.
NBC's embrace of live event-streaming has been less than wholehearted. NewTeeVee put it best back in January:
"Despite touting more than 835 hours of live video from the Winter Games, less than half of that will be actually be streamed live online."
Instead, networks like CNBC and MSNBC air some of the daytime events, a strategy that strikes us as just off-base. Think about it, how many of the daytime viewers for CNBC and MSNBC will want to watch the Winter Olympic Games? Wouldn't it be better to take advantage of people who, I don't know, might want to watch from work?
Add to that NBC's attempt to limit the streams to users who pay for cable (though it seems unclear that it can actually verify if you do actually subscribe or not) and you have lots of angry fans.