NBC Takes the Gold in EPIC FAIL

If you've watched any of NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics, you know it's worse than not watching at all. If I want to watch an event, I want to watch it, not edited highlights of it featuring the Americans and whoever is favored to win, interspersed with a bunch of crap. And you only even get that if they decide to show what you're interested in at all.

Last time around, for the summer games, they solved this problem with a website where you could watch whatever event you wanted, whenever you wanted. You could watch live streams, or full-event replays, in a player that was halfway decent in spite of being implemented in Microsoft's Silverlight. I enjoyed the Olympics more than I ever had before because of that site; every minute of every event, whether televised by NBC or not, was available.

This year, they claim to have the same thing available, but the current incarnation of the NBC Olympics site is a pile of crap. The design is so bad that it's difficult to find what you're looking for – which would be okay if, once found, you could watch it.

Because of licensing restrictions, in order to watch everything that's available you are supposed to be on a cable or satellite TV plan with which NBC has a deal. That's basically all of them; so far, so good. So, when you go to watch something they bring up a thing where you're supposed to choose your provider – and then you have to “prove” that you're not lying by logging in at that provider.

I have Comcast cable. So I choose Comcast and get sent over to the Comcast site to authenticate. I didn't have a web account there, so I dug out a cable bill and created one. Now, when I choose Comcast at NBC's site, and log into Comcast, all I get is a nice screen insisting that “It appears you don't have a Comcast Video subscription.” Except, like, I do. The claim is that, as long as you have a cable package of a level that includes MSNBC and CNBC, you're good to go. I do. If I click the link for “Get your Comcast Video subscription” I get a page about signing up for cable, which I already have. If I click the “Think you have it?” link, I get sent to another Comcast page where I'm all logged in and my account information clearly shows that I have everything they say I'm supposed to have.

Logging out and back in, clearing all cookies for both the NBC Olympics site and Comcast, clicking various links, trying it from different parts of the site, trying it over and over, day after day – nothing gets me in. Going to “contact us” and reporting the problem feels satisfying for a few minutes, but of course does nothing. Earlier tonight I somehow managed to watch a couple things, but then clicking on the next thing I wanted brought back the dreaded Comcast “Access not Authorized” window.

So, here we are, Olympics Day 11, and I guess I'm basically not watching.

It's 2010, for crying out loud. Why are we still dealing with this kind of nonsense? Is this the future of television? Shouldn't the entire idea of “cable TV” be dead by now? Why are we still clinging to an outdated, consumer-hostile business model from the 1980s? More to the point, why can't NBC, with multiple channels available, provide coverage of the Olympics that's worth watching?