We haven't even reached "Day 1" of the Quadrennial International Sporting Event at Pyeongchang in terms of Peacock mothership coverage, but things are already underway.
- The Peacock ran a special on Monday night, "The Best of U.S.", hosted by Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. They are Kabletown's answer to "why should millennials watch QISE?" They look and act like they turned the wrong direction when getting off the elevator--there's a Bravo reality competition without hosts right now. Lipinski looked like she had a party to attend afterward. Weir's hair looked like he had just taken off a fez.
- The special consisted of various pre-taped segments--"up close and personal" segments on the athletes, a chef reviewing Korean cuisine, a preview of a mini-doc covering the Calgary ice skating event in 1988--basically material that might be rerun if the weather turns bad and events are postponed. Some of it involved music videos/commercials for big ticket athletes you've probably seen if you have watched the Peacock in the last month.
- The special also gave us our first view of the Peacock's HQ for the games--as per usual, made up to look like a ski lodge. Views of the various venues can be seen out the windows--if those are just video screens, they did a god job.
- Meanwhile, the Peacock announced a live feed of the games available via Snapchat, as well as a customized experience on Hulu Live. I have the former (though I've rarely used it since downloading), and we're looking into options about the latter (we have Hulu, but not the Live option), so I'll try to report on those as well.
- Tonight, nbcqise.com streamed early events--mixed doubles curling and downhill skiing training runs. It certainly wasn't an auspicious start--a scheduled figure skating practice session turned into a one-hour "Coverage will begin soon" screen. They finally got their act together--they are using the "OBS" (QISE Broadcasting System) feed for this, which is the one countries without their own crews use. That means it's far more balanced and basic--there's a (very faint) play-by-play announcer and that's it. The video quality is decent, even on the large screen I'm using for Chromecast. They drop in a commercial every 15 minutes or so (they seem to be coming faster now—must be based on the event).
- We also got our first look at the OAR team--the QISE Athletes from Russia. This is the result of the Russia doping scandal--they don't have an official team, but some athletes got an "all clear" and were able to attend anyway. Their uniforms are the equivalent of black and white "generic food" boxes.
- We then got the downhill training runs. Kind of like pre-season football, just going through the motions.
- I keep hearing little audio "hiccups" where a phrase is stated twice. I think they are still working out the streaming technical bumps.
The Peacock mothership officially kicks things off tomorrow with figure skating and freestyle skiing—it’s EXTREME!