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March was a great month for all the sport fanatics over the world. Here in the U.S we had the intense battles of March Madness going on which was perfectly stirred together with the new Nascar season. World cup qualifications, for men's soccer that is, were held all around the globe, playoffs in the Champions League kicked off all over Europe, soccer again, and the new Formula 1 season had a promising start in sunny Melbourne, Australia.

March was also my third month in this country and it was the month when I realized how much I miss Europe and especially Sweden. The thing that got these wheels in motion was a thing that happened when I watched my first ever Nascar race. Just before I dozed of the sport anchors announced that they, Fox, were going to put out the yellow flag so they could have a longer commercial break. This means that the safety car is going to be deployed onto the circuit and that the drivers must slow down and drive behind it. I've seen the same thing in other sports, almost every sport here in the U.S has a couple of interruptions by the television networks. Most people seem to be okay with this, you don't hear Larry King rambling on about commercials during a weightlifting competition, and that's fine with me. But as a European I'm not used to this and I don't like these methods, I worry for the future.

The one thing that worries me most is that the main sport events, mostly in the U.S, gets longer and longer because of commercials interruptions. How far can the television networks push their interference to the events? In my mind they are already near the edge to what the audience can and will accept. A normal basketball game, broadcasted on any of the big networks, lasts for almost 3 hours and a football game can last for more then 4 hours. That's a pretty long time to spend in front of the TV any day of the week. Some might say that this is good, that the fans can enjoy more airtime for their favorite sport. But extending the event time with commercials isn't really giving the sport more airtime, its more a way of filling the broadcast with things that doesn't have anything to do with the main event in order to sell more advertising.

Others claim that interruptions during a sport event are good because it allows you to do other things during the break, like going to the bathroom or doing your laundry. One of the most thrilling things with sport is that you always have to be on the edge when following an event and when the networks allows you to go to the bathroom during a game they take away a bit of this thrill. Going to the bathroom during a soccer game in Europe is almost impossible because you'll miss to much of the action, but here in the U.S you are can go to the bathroom during a commercial break which in the end changes the event experience to the worse.

I think that sport fans would like to have shorter games, not less game play but games with fewer things that make the games unnecessary long such as commercial interruptions. As a sports fan I want to see the game with only a few commercials and it shouldn't take all day to finish watching it. The famous water cooler effect, that the marketing people stride to achieve, will soon be gone if the games continues to become longer and longer. No one will have the energy to see the whole thing anymore.

 

Downloading. Just saying the word makes you feel a little bit awkward, almost a bit guilty, at least if you're not in Sweden. In my home country, many miles from Lawrence, Kansas, it's legal to download anything from the Internet. Movies, music, computer programs you can download anything and no one cares. Most of the things that people download in Sweden are movies and television shows from America, the U.S is the only entertainment super power in the world. Sweden is also home of one of the world's most popular downloading sites called The Pirate Bay. You could probably name Sweden the capital of downloading. Who is suffering from illegal downloading then? Most movie companies and music labels claims that they are suffering from lower income because of people downloading their material of the Internet illegally. Record sales have dropped from 1.4 Billion dollars in 1999 to 1 Billion in 2007, which is the latest report from RIAA.

Do the movie companies and television networks try to change the situation so it could benefit themselves and their customers? Not really. Okay, you can watch most television shows online but it only works for people in the U.S. The rest of the world has to wait for movies and television shows to come to our countries. Most of the movies nominated for Academy Awards this year haven't reached Europe yet. The normal time between a new episode of a television show being broadcasted in the U.S and the time it's broadcasted in Europe is a month, sometimes it takes up to a year. In the modern society that we currently live in these kind of waiting periods is outdated, like the eggnog from Christmas that you forgot in your fridge and now seems to be moving around on its own.

Is there any solution to this problem? Of course there is a solution for this problem. First of all, the movie companies and the television networks should try to cut down the waiting periods for people not living in the U.S. Make it available for television networks around the world within a day or two after the shows been broadcasted in the U.S. Some people would probably still download the show of the internet but most people would be too lazy and wait for the show to come on their TV. The waiting period theory doesn't apply for the music industry though. They could fix their part of the downloading problem by lowering their sale prices of albums and making music cheaper to buy online.

People download things of the Internet because it's easy. You just have to decide what to download and then wait for it to download. It's almost as easy as eating an apple, which isn't very hard if you have all your teeth in your mouth left. There is no possible way for the entertainment companies to stop people from downloading. Instead of trying to kill it off they should try to adopt.

The Olympics in Beijing this past year was a success for most of the American athletes. Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals and both basketball teams won gold medals. For NBC though the Olympics wasn't a success. When parent company General Electric presented their earnings for the third quarter of 2008 they also made it public that NBC lost money from the Olympics. According to Reuters NBC generated more then 1 billion in revenue but they still managed to lose money. How could this be possible?

NBC didn't have an easy situation to start with. The Olympics were held in Beijing, a long way from America, and most of the main events were held in the middle of the American night. NBC knew this when they acquired the rights for the games back in 2003 and they used all their power and influence to make their own situation better. One of the things NBC did was that they convinced the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to hold the swim finals during the Beijing morning instead of the evening. This meant that the American viewers could watch their sweetheart Michael Phelps win his 8 gold medals on prime time television. But even with this move NBC didn't manage to make any profit from the Olympics games of 2008. So what will happen in 2012?

Most of the main events of the 2012 London Olympics are going to be held during midday in America. This means that NBC can't reach their target audience when the main events are held, most people will be at work. This will possibly also lead to less income in the advertising department, because no company wants to advertise when no one is watching. All this puts NBC in a lot of trouble. Adding the current economical meltdown to this cocktail of economic disasters makes thing even clearer. NBC will have a hard time making any profit from the Olympic games of 2012.

There are a couple of solutions for this problem. NBC could start a pay-per-view channel for the Olympics and thereby forcing the American viewers to pay. This solution will probably help NBC's economical problems but they will have a problem convincing their viewers to pay for something that used to be free. A second solution is that NBC tapes all the events that occurs during the day and shows them later on at prime time. This is probably the easiest solution for NBC. They don't broadcast anything live instead they tape the events and show them whenever they want. This solution is compatible with the first one. The viewers that are eager to see the Olympics live can do so by buying the content of the pay-per-view channel. NBC has to do something to fix this problem or else they will have a hard time convincing themselves to acquire the television rights for the Olympic games in the future. They might even have problems surviving as a television network.