The Beijing Winter Olympics are less than six months away: Can NBC learn from its mistakes covering the Tokyo Summer Games?

The Week

"It's a great American tradition to bash NBC's coverage of the Olympics, but there is absolutely no excuse for how confusing it's been to try to watch the Summer Games this year," says Jeva Lange. "With NBC, USA, CNBC, NBCSN, the Olympic Channel, the Golf Channel, Telemundo, and Peacock all carrying coverage, it's required dense viewing guides to figure out how to watch what, and where." She adds: "NBC desperately needs to get this straightened out, because it's shedding badly-needed viewers over the inconvenience...Having to jump between NBC's various channels or streams when an event is about to come on is confusing and stressful. Trying to revisit events afterward, though, can require clicking through literally hours of static cameras and dead air. Prioritizing a simplified, user-friendly experience with easy-to-navigate schedules in Beijing will be the bare minimum; editing the replay streams to include just the competitions and commentary would be the icing on the cake." NBC also has to be better at covering the politics of the Beijing Games. "As much as the IOC and broadcasters might want to ignore it, the Games are political. Pretending they aren't feels disconnected from reality, or worse, callous," says Lange, adding: "Politics will be an even more glaring issue during the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022. Already there is debate about boycotting the Games due to China's human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, as well as anti-democratic crackdowns in Tibet and Hong Kong. Ignoring that those stories are also a part of the Games would be negligent to the point of complicity."