As i am sure you know, NBC is not the reason why people watch. It has to do with the Olympics. NBC gets the rights to show it because it was the highest bidder. But then again, I'm preaching to the choir.

1. how NBC screwed up the Olympics
2. NBC was dumb for not making things available via the web before airing on TV
3. posts designed to educate people on how to get around the licensing rights so they could see content via another countries feed
4. suggestions that NBC viewership would be drastically hurt because they didn't hold a monopoly on TV viewing and viewers would rise up and watch content on their own terms.

Many of the technology (and television) articles I read would have you believe TV is already dead (and at the expense of the Internet). While the trend is certainly in place of broadcast networks being hurt by a variety of things, the broadcast nets are mostly hurt by CABLE and not the Internet!

And the old girl still has some life in her when it comes to big events. Some suggested NBC's ratings for the opening ceremonies would suffer due to online viewing. I found that as ridiculous as saying the Super Bowl's ratings would suffer because of the Internet. Even more ridiculous, the notion that any great number of people would install a proxy server so they could watch live feeds via other countries' web sites. I love the Internet more than most people, but the suggestion that it matters much in people's living rooms today, especially for big events is a joke. The headline was somewhat from the perspective of NBC: “screw you, tinfoil hat wearing predictors of doom. We don't care what you think and we got our ratings anyway!”

I'm not surprised at the ratings. My drift is that many people like to watch the opening ceremonies, but not the events (insert my wife, and many of my friends, here). I passed. It just doesn't interest me one bit.