NBC is planning to saturate August will more hours of Olympics coverage than all Olympics TV before combined. 2,000 hours will be featured online and the rest spread across NBC and its assortment of cable stations. But the big numbers cloud NBC’s flawed new media strategy that still focuses on limited, controlled content, missing the perfect opportunity to build new business models.

NBC is limited the popular events to its networks and leaving fencing and kayaking online along will lots of behind the scenes footages only the most die-hard will watch. Other news organizations are banned from using any videos of the events and even have to take down footage of the Olympic trials once the games start.  NBC is also hyping its anti-piracy efforts to keep footage off other video sites with China promising to “attack” websites hosting unlicensed footage.

Ironically, with all this effort, NBC plans to loose money on the Olympics.  Spending $800 million to air the games lets the network publicize its own shows and fall line-up.  If the Olympics are all about promotion, then why doesn’t NBC want it promoted?

By limiting how and when and where people can watch the games only means people won’t watch them or will go behind NBC’s back to get what they want.  If pirated copies of the games meet consumers needs, then that’s what consumers will find.

NBC had a gold mine here where they could flood the web with all the Olympics footage possible.  Provide some embedding code and let the steaming video spread. People could then watch the videos where they want when they want with streamed ads in tacked.  Providing the same content on demand brings more people to Olympics websites, where they can be exposed to more information on events, merchandise, and shows, even if the video isn’t found on an NBC affiliated site.

The fact that NBC already plans on taking a loss should encourage them to take risks with their online strategy.  Instead NBC is pushing leftovers on the internet and keeping the fresh meat for the networks. If its online strategy fails to meet expectations, NBC will unlikely consider the poor choice in content.  If it successful, whatever that means, then I’ll wonder how much better it could have done with real, shareable content.

Last week I wrote about an unknown user who first reported Tim Russert’s death on Wikipedia. That “junior-level employee” worked for the Internet Broadcasting Systems who provides web services to NBC affiliates, has been suspended (earlier reports said fired, but NBC disputes this) for updating the Wikipedia page. The employee thought the information was public record.

Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider wrote:

It’s one thing for a news organization to decide to delay reporting news of a staffer’s death out of deference to his or her family (this makes sense). It’s another for the organization to expect other organizations to follow the same policy. And it is yet another thing for someone to deliberately strike accurate facts from a collective record to appease an upset client, which is what someone at IBS apparently did.

The world has changed in last 15 years, and the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. If NBC wants to maintain its tradition with respect to staffers’ deaths, that’s fine. In the meantime, it should recognize that its chances of controlling a story this big are–and should be–infinitesimal and that “citizen journalism” has long since gone mainstream. If the employee at IBS who updated the Wikipedia entry did not learn of it via a confidential NBC communication, moreover, NBC and IBS owe him or her an apology and a job.(Emphasis his)

As Mathew Ingram writes “The lesson is that as long as there is news, people will try to share it. (Note: The NYT story says that NBC tried to hold back the news).”

As I said last week, Wikipedia provided rapid information while NBC took 40 minutes after Wikipedia to report Russert’s death. Information thanks to the internet moves faster. NBC can try to keep its exclusive stories, but it can’t be surprised if some younger, sprier website scoops it.

Tim Russert, journalist and moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, died June 13th of a sudden heart attack, first reported on his Wikipedia page at 3:01 p.m. The New York Post had a short announcement half an hour later followed by the first televised announcement by Tom Brokaw on NBC at 3:39 p.m. The IP address of the editor came from Internet Broadcast Systems, an IT company that worked with NBC in the past.

Wikipedia’s scoop raises questions about its legitimacy as a news source. The ability for anybody to edit Wikipedia can and has led to abuses of the online encyclopedia and has hurt its credibility among educators, parents, and people who don’t understand the system. I won’t expect a reporter or user to trust Wikipedia absolutely just like I won’t trust the New York Times or a blog without some kind of citation or corroboration.

Wikipedia’s strength, as evidenced by the Russert edit, is the site can respond quickly to new information The risk is this information isn’t properly vetted, but that’s what the community is for - a community mainstream news organizations don’t have, leading even the most trustworthy sources to post incorrect information and take longer to correct it.

Wikipedia remains an encyclopedia, not a news organization (that’s what Wikinews is for). But can these lines blur?

I had avoided watching political debates this cycle mostly because I hate the canned rhetoric and lack of real debate. The rules are so strictly prepared by the candidates, the debates are in my cynical opinion, a badly scripted reality show. But I caved Tuesday and watched the debate on MSNBC.

While the debated seemed one notch above reality TV (a game show maybe), I found both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engaging. It was the moderating journalists that looked like idiots.

NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams and Meet the Press host Tim Russert went back and forth in a subtle battle for who could ask the least relevant question.

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