ESPN's coverage of the Olympics in the U.S. sans video rights — Poynter

Kelly McBride critiqued ESPN's coverage of the London 2012 Olympics for the Poynter Institute. ESPN did not have the rights to broadcast the Olympics. That meant its flagship newscast SportsCenter faced many challenges when reporting the games, especially not being able to show video of events until the day after they occurred.

Some pertinent lines describing NBC's control over Olympic video content used by other broadcasters:

"The rights to Olympic video are restricted, more so than almost any other sporting event. Of the hours and hours of amazing video every day, NBC released only the bare-bones highlights. Much of that video was for TV only. No amount of money can change this, said Mike Leber, ESPN senior coordinating producer for news coverage. NBC had the American rights to the Olympics and dictated what video was available to other broadcasters.

NBC also dictated when the video was available and for how long. Video wasn't available until 3 a.m. or later, when NBC's Olympics programming was off the air on the West Coast, and there were no digital highlights available for the Web."

London 2012 opening ceremony TV preview

Where to watch the London 2012 opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics is less than 12 hours away. The ceremony itself, named "Isles of Wonder," is expected to be viewed by a billion people around the world. Almost everyone with a television or internet connection across the globe will be witnessing it live, except for those in the United States. 

That's because broadcaster NBC will broadcast it on tape delay for primetime. While broadcasters around the world aim to bring the Olympic experience to their viewers live, NBC cares about securing the largest possible audience at 7:30 ET/PT to ... promote its fall programming lineup.

Penn State sanctions by NCAA

NCAA president Mark Emmert handing out the sanctions. (Getty Images)

The NCAA on July 24 punished the Penn State football program with a $60 million fine, a four-year ban from participating in postseason bowl games and the erasing of 112 wins by the team from 1998 to 2011. That also means Joe Paterno's all-time record of 409 wins no longer stands.

Olympics snippets – July 14, 2012

Assortment of stories from the London 2012 Olympics:

All England Club, Wimbledon, decked in purple. (Reuters)

London 2012: US Ralph Lauren uniform made in China — BBC News

The revelation that uniforms to be worn by U.S. athletes at the Olympics drew "bipartisan" disapproval from top lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) said the U.S. Olympic Committee "should be ashamed of themselves." House Speaker John Boehner (R) tersely remarked, "You'd think they'd know better." Everyone's sounding desperate to score cheap points.

Will you still medal in the morning? — ESPN The Magazine

The real Olympic Games take place in the Olympic Village:

"The next morning," [U.S. Olympic target shooter Josh] Lakatos says, "swear to God, the entire women's 4x100 relay team of some Scandinavian-looking country walks out of the house, followed by boys from our side. And I'm just going, 'Holy crap, we'd watched these girls run the night before.'"

We need more epic stories such as these.

Wimbledon braced for purple haze — AFP
The Olympic Tennis Event will be an encore of this year's Wimbledon Championships – minus all the tradition. The All England Club, usually decorated in dark green, will be adorned with purple livery along with huge sponsor logos. Also, players won't have to wear white and will likely dress in their national colours.

Watching the Olympics in Malaysia

The BBC's London 2012 Olympics trailer.

Above is a pretty sweet screencap of the BBC's 100% CGI Olympic Games trailer. It features London's most prominent landmarks including the London Bridge, the London Eye, Big Ben, 30 St Mary Axe, St Paul's Cathedral, and the recently completed Shard against the Olympic Stadium's lights mounted on its distinctive triangular towers. Not to forget the lush greenery in the foreground that represents rural Britain. The BBC is of course the UK's long-standing broadcaster of the Olympics, though its rights to future Games may be in doubt.

The main channels BBC1/BBC1 HD, BBC2, BBC3, and BBC HD will be dedicated to the event over all 17 days of competition. In addition, there will be 24 live HD channels accessible via TV providers Sky, Virgin and Freesat. For Freeview and BT Vision subscribers, there will only be one additional channel. The BBC Sport website will also stream 2,500 hours of coverage.

In Malaysia, sole TV provider Astro is not also the broadcaster of this year's Olympics, having aired the previous three. It probably decided to focus its resources on Euro 2012, seeing that Malaysians are far more interested in football. In 2008, Astro broadcasted both the Euros and the Olympics. However, the cost of television rights to sporting events have risen sharply over the last few years. That, along with Astro's direction of acquiring more football rights (including the Premier League since 2010 and the Champions League from 2012-13), could be the reasons Astro is sitting out this Olympics.