Another 21st century TV casualty

I like watching the Olympics. Or to be more precise, I like watching Olympic venues. Most of the sports don’t do much for me, but I like looking at the elaborate stadiums, pretty swimming pools and the like.

Or to be still more precise, I used to like watching the venues. This is my first once-every-four-years without cable or the dish, so I’m forced to limit my viewing to what the Web can provide. Which turns out to be not much. I tried downloading NBC’s Olympics coverage iPad app, but to no avail. It required a userid and password from my multichannel service provider, which of course I don’t have.

So here’s the latest elaborate corporate relationship: NBC has no problem screwing its broadcast affiliates by allowing viewers to watch directly over the Internet. Yet it still seeks to compel us to remain thralls of Comcast, Time Warner, or DirecTV.

I suspect this will work out okay for the network this time around. But I wonder about the state of the infoscape four years from now. How tempting might it become to pick up five or ten bucks per viewer for an app for people without MSPs? And how much more of key age and income demographics will become unreachable except via the net?