There are 36 sport disciplines in the 2012 Olympics. Within them are about 2-47 different classes for both men and women combined. Within those are several days of round-robin, elimination, quarterfinal, and final competition. Now everyone wants their sport on tv. Whether is 3am 12 noon or 7pm. Fitting all these sports and their days of qualifications into one day of coverage LIVE is almost impossible. Someone will have to be left out. Plus some are played at the same time as others. So basically what NBC and it networks have done is decide which games to air live and which to show later in tape delay in order to fit everything in one day. There is also the problem of a time zone difference. England is about 6hrs ahead of us in the U.S. (Central Time). So a game like swimming 400m IM starting at 6pm London time (or 6pm GMT), would be 12pm central time here in the U.S.. Most people are at work! I highly doubt that most businesses or companies or hospitals would allow for its employees to stop what they are doing and watch a swimming competition at NOON! But is you tape it, and run another game in its place, live or not, you can then air swimming at 7pm when most Americans are at home.
Now as for the spoilers. This is another part of the Olympics that has been around since I can remember. Networks and local station would announce results of top completions on-air. Of course telling those who dont want to see or hear to avert their eyes and ears. The "problem" is the increase in the number of people and news organizations using twitter, facebook and other social media platforms to distribute news and information. In 1980 when USA played USSR in hocky the game was tape delayed. The advantage being there was no social media of course. So ABC sports were able to keep the result of the game quies till air time. If you dont want the results early drop the networks from your twitter and facebook feeds. Its easy. Just click unlike or unfollow. Now I will say this, I have seen that on air there is typically a warning of "spoiler alert" before results are read. I have not seen this on twitter from the networks. When a game finishes the results are posted immediately with no warning. What im getting at is if the networks wont stop posting results before airtime, they should at least pop up a warning before results are posted.
That is all...im done.
