Frazier Blog

After CNNBRK sent out the following twitter update (tweet) “Jamaica’s Usain Bolt wins the men’s 100 meters gold medal in a world record time at the Beijing Olympics.” I was frustrated as I wanted to try and watch it, without knowing who won. Then came the tweet that helped to give me 15 seconds of fame in the geek world. “U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps wins a record eighth Olympic gold medal with his victory in the 4×100 medley relay.”

I sent a frustrated tweet at CNNBRK saying “idiots! I am removing you for the rest of the games. Do you like being jerks!?!?!?”

Apparently I either did it fast or well because techcrunch.com chose to use my tweet in a story about people being frustrated with CNNBRK spoiling Olympic results. The headline read “CNN Doesn’t Include Spoiler Alert In Tweets, Twitter Users Say It Ruined Olympics” They used my tweet and another users to show some peoples frustrations with the results being spoiled.

Almost all of the 84 comments thought we had it coming. Since we were “subscribed to a breaking news service.” On one level I agree with them. However, yesterday was the first time that CNN had posted breaking news results during the Olympic games. Many medals had already been won and other world records smashed but yesterday was the first day that any Olympic news had been sent out. Slow news day? So I was a little bit surprised that two announcements came out on the same day. Many comments took aim at NBC for not showing the Olympics live, I too wish that NBC would show more (or anything for the west coast) live, but the fact is they are not.

I think my rage at CNNBRK was compounded by many other spoiled results. I have stumbled upon results before I watch them when looking for other world news throughout the week. I seem to recall that four years ago many websites offered spoiler results before they proclaimed the results to world. Can we PLEASE bring these back? I hate going to CNN or NYTimes and seeing the event i was excited to watch spoiled.

I did sent a note to the NYTimes asking them to add a spoiler alert and have removed CNN from my twitter account.

My friend Matt has started a petition asking NBC to show the events live next time. Go sign it.

Now about events being live. I can understand why NBC is doing it the way they are. People are watching and advertisers are buying more ad time. I could be wrong but I don’t think as may people would watch finals if they were showed at 6am or other off peak hours. Although Matt does make a great point that they could then rebroadcast it in prime time.

While, it was fun seeing my name get on techcruch.com, if it ever happens again I hope it will be for something more impressive.

Enjoying the Olympics (spoiled or not),

Paul