Mediagazer: NBC gets bumper Olympic ratings despite complaints (Reuters)

9:50 PM ET, July 28, 2012

Top News:

NBC gets bumper Olympic ratings despite complaints — (Reuters) - NBC got off to a bumper ratings start with its coverage of the London Olympics, despite complaints from Americans that they had to wait hours to watch TV coverage of the opening ceremony. — NBC said on Saturday that according …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Associated Press, @pkafka and @wjcarter

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

NBC Hit For Editing Opening Ceremony Segment Seen As ‘Victims Tribute’ — NEW YORK — NBC has come under fire in the British press for editing out a performance during the London Olympics opening ceremony that has been interpreted by some as a tribute to victims of the “7/7” terrorist attacks that rocked that city in 2005.

Discussion: entertainment.time.com, Mediaite, Guardian, BuzzFeed and Mediaite

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

NBCOlympics' Opening Ceremony Tape Delay: Stupid, Stupid, Stupid — If you were paying attention to Twitter today, you were probably met with two conflicting sides of the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. On the one hand, you had those who were on the ground (or who had access to the live stream somehow …

Discussion: MediaShift, Forbes, TechCrunch, Deadspin, GigaOM, Rolling Stone, CNET, Yahoo! News, Guardian, Lost Remote, Multichannel, The Wrap, Speakeasy, Pocket-lint, AllThingsD, summergames.ap.org and Softpedia News

Bryan Bishop / The Verge:

NBC insults viewer intelligence, says Olympic Opening Ceremony is too ‘complex’ for online audience — The 2012 Summer Olympics have finally kicked off, and while NBC has been boasting about the digital options it's offering US sports fans, the broadcaster offered no live streaming of the opening ceremonies …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times and CNET

Tom Watson / Forbes:

Olympics Coverage: NBC Apparently Thinks It's 1992, Seemingly Unaware Of Twitter's Existence — Well, NBC was trending this afternoon on Twitter across the U.S. - and not because of some hilarious new sitcom. No, it's the wired multitudes taking to that interconnected series of tubes to blab …

Discussion: GigaOM, Yahoo! News, mUmBRELLA, A VC, TVNewser, Inside Higher Ed, Multichannel, The New Yorker Blog, Guardian, The Daily Fix, Broadcasting & Cable, AllThingsD, GigaOM and Washington Post

Jordan Zakarin / Hollywood Reporter: London 2012: Primetime TV Will Rule Over Digital For Years, Says NBC Olympics EP Jim Bell

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Mail Online's 69% revenue growth suggests paywalls not the answer — Is the website's £27m in projected revenue this year already taking it levels of turnover that paywall-only sites cannot match? — Been bored today? Chances are you logged into Mail Online. Seven clicks later, you remembered who you were.

Discussion: paidContent

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Context, code, and community: Source is one-stop shopping for newsroom developers — A lot of newsroom developers are doing good work, and part of that good work is talking about their work. See ProPublica, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Chicago Tribune for a few examples.

Jim Romenesko:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch lays off 23 employees — A three-paragraph story on the Post-Dispatch website says the Lee-owned newspaper has laid off 23 staffers from the newsroom, advertising and production. I reported yesterday that four Post-Dispatch newsroom managers were called at home …

Discussion: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter, RFTmusic and Storify

Dean Starkman / CJR:

A WSJ ‘A-hed’ covers the same topic twice — Tapping on the glass of a barometer for quality — Back when News Corp. took over Dow Jones & Co., which some of us didn't think was a particularly good idea, a lot of close Wall Street Journal-watchers looked to the “A-hed” as a barometer of the paper's editorial health.

Adrienne LaFrance / Nieman Journalism Lab:

With its new pop-out markets widget, The Wall Street Journal is after super-niche readers — The Wall Street Journal quietly launched a new function last month, a pop-out Markets Data window that puts a real-time markets ticker in the corner of your screen.

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

‘CNN Needs New Thinking,’ Says Departing President. ‘Duh,’ Says Everyone Else. — Jim Walton took over CNN at a moment of crisis. Just a year earlier, it had been knocked out of first place in the ratings by the surging Fox News. It took a few years, but Walton managed to solve the problem …

Discussion: Mediaite, Associated Press, BtoB Magazine and CNN

Adam Martin / The Atlantic Wire:

James Holmes' Prosecutors Say Notebook Story Can't Be Trusted — That story about the notebook James Holmes supposedly mailed to a psychiatrist, outlining his plans to shoot up the movie theater was a hell of a scoop for Fox News, but now Aurora prosecutors are saying in a court filing that it was probably all a big hoax.

Discussion: @producermatthew and The Latest Word

Bloomberg:

Google Seeks Dismissal of E-Books Case — Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit over electronic books, saying the public benefits from the company's digital-scanning program and the market isn't harmed. — Google in May lost a bid to dismiss claims by groups including …

Discussion: Reuters