Our 16yo houseguest wanted to watch the Olympics so we got a PeacockTV subscription.

NBC apparently doesn't know that streaming is different from broadcast and they want to make it as close to broadcast as possible. And that means
- don't tell you which events are on a program
- don't tell you where in the program the events will happen
- make it impossible to fast-forward to the event you want without a) watching all the ads and b) showing you a thumbnail preview like YouTube does so you know where to stop.

That last one is important. If you FF past an ad and then stop to see where you are, you must watch an ad before you see any content. Then you FF again because you're still in the wrong place and you see another ad.

So the result is that it is way worse than broadcast in that most people watching via broadcast would be on a DVR and there you DO get a preview as you FF and you do NOT get forced to watch ads.

But NBC needs to make money, right? And they bought the rights, so that's how it is. You have to watch the ads, right?

Actually, no. They post events to YouTube for FREE. So I just wanted to watch the Men's 1500m final and couldn't find it on the NBC site by either scrolling or searching. So I did a Google search, which took me straight to the full event posted with no ads for free on YouTube.

I've seen this with other events. Only very long events like say gymnastics or pole vault where competitors compete one at a time really require a subscription.

So here I sit with a paid PeacockTV subscription for the sole purpose of watching the Olympics, and we're watching it for free on YouTube, courtesy of Peacock.

Someone has seriously messed up their strategy. If I had an ear at NBC, I would say
- teasers on YouTube
- long-form coverage on Peacock
- single event coverage on Peacock in a format that was searchable

This seems pretty obvious for anyone looking to maximize revenue and minimize churn (and general WTF dismay).

>>single event coverage on Peacock

The replays not being searchable is a pain. If you look around you can find all the events as a replay but it can take some scrolling to find just what you want.

I am a fan of some of the stuff they have done on Peacock but there is definite room for improvement.

And that 1500 was an amazing race. It has probably been the most intriguing event I have watched so far this year.

It was! I had never even heard of Hocker, but there was a lot of ink about Ingebritsen and Kerr trash talking each other, each claiming that Paris would show which one had the chops to back up their talk. And in the end, it was neither.

And what a stunning last-second move to to the inside by Hocker. Apparently according to the commentator, moving right is a signature move by Ingebritsen. I'm sure there's a strategy that I don't understand, having never run track, but I'm not sure Hocker could have made his move if Ingebritsen had held the inside lane.

As for NBC, I scrolled and scrolled and could not find the 1500m final. At the very least, it's a bad UI. They have a schedule and there are not THAT many events per day. Every event could have a link from the schedule to the replay. It seems like an intern could handle that.

And more generally, what I was thinking is they had a chance to nab a subscriber, but the experience was so bad, that I'll just cancel before I get billed for another month.

It was a terribly wasted opportunity for what I think of as a second-tier streaming service in terms of subscribers (purely subjective guess) to get in front of a lot of people and move up the ladder