Back in the olden days, kids, if you wanted to watch the Winter Olympics and couldn’t stay glued to your TV, you were like the fifth guy on a four-man bobsled team:
Totally out of the picture.
Credit: Natacha Pisarenko
Credit: Natacha Pisarenko
Now, though, you don’t even need to be near a TV anymore to keep up with all the winners and lugers.
(Though, read on, for the what’s what -- and when -- on TV anyway).
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games officially kick off Friday night with the Opening Ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea (Actually they kick off Thursday morning there with -- we are not making this up -- mixed doubles curling. We’ll get back to that in a bit).
PyeongChang is 14 hours ahead of Atlanta and the rest of the Eastern Time Zone in the U.S. That means the Opening Ceremony will have come and (long) gone by the time NBC airs it at 8 p.m. Friday as a “fully-produced presentation” (translation: it’ll be compressed, taped and edited, with lots of focus on the U.S. athletes), hosted by Katie Couric and Mike Tirico).
But in a first-ever for NBC, they'll live stream the Opening Ceremony on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app at 6 a.m. ET Friday. Even better, the whole thing will be commentary-free while focusing on all "the pageantry and the Parade of Nations," NBC Olympics says.
Yep, that's right. Soohorang, a cuddly looking white tiger, may be the official PyeongChang 2018 mascot. But your real friend this Olympics turns out to be streaming.
NBC Olympics will live stream 1,800 hours from these Games -- including, for the first time ever, all the primetime programming on the NBC broadcast network. That's in addition to its live streaming of all events on the app and NBCOlympics.com, and simulstreaming of Olympic coverage on other NBC Universal networks.
Note: There's no entirely TV-free lunch here. To access the live streams you must authenticate "with a cable, satellite or telco TV subscription through your service provider," NBC Olympics says. For complete info on streaming, including troubleshooting issues, go to www.nbcolympics.com/watch-live.
Still, it’s significant what this means: Even if you don’t want to turn on the TV, you don’t have to miss a single minute of the double axels during NBC’s primetime coverage (and coverage and coverage...) of figure skating.
Meanwhile, what's a hockey fan to do when the U.S. women's team meets the dreaded OAR squad (aka "Olympic Athletes from Russia") at the height of Atlanta rush hour at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 13? Answer: Stream it on mobile in their car, all the way around Spaghetti Junction and down the Downtown Connector. (Find the daily, sport-by-sport schedule of events at nbcolympics.com/full-schedule).
Related video: So long spoiler alerts! NBC Olympics prime time coverage will be live in all U.S. time zones
For those who still like to watch their Olympics plopped down in front of the TV, fear not. For the first time ever for a Winter Games, NBC will present its primetime coverage live across all time zones in the U.S. That begins at 8 p.m. ET each night, except Sundays, when coverage gets going at 7 p.m. ET.
Along with NBC, which will be the "exclusive" home of figure skating (it airs 12 out of 18 nights) and alpine skiing (11 nights) and other sports every day starting at 3 p.m., CNBC will air curling as part of its 46 hours of live coverage; USA network (40.5 hours) will air live hockey and curling, and NBCSN will have a whopping 369 hours of coverage, including 10 days when it will be wall-to-wall, 24/7 Olympics. NBCSN is where you'll find gold medal finals in hockey, snowboarding, short track skating, luge and bobsled (For complete TV listings, go to www.nbcolympics.com/tv-listings).
Now, back to that early curling event . The official PyeongChang 2018 web site says these Winter Olympics run from Feb. 9 - Feb. 25. But in fact, there's so much Games to go around, they have to start earlier. Figure skating (what else?) begins its team competition event live in primetime on NBC at 8 p.m on Thursday (10 a.m. Friday in PyeongChang).
That’s hours before the Opening Ceremony, but it’s not even the first official competion of these Winter Games. That honor goes to a brand new Olympic event, mixed doubles curling. It gets underway at 9:05 a.m. Thursday in South Korea with the U.S. brother-sister team of Matt and Becca Hamilton taking on the duo from the OAR.
That’s Wednesday night here. And yep, you can catch it via live stream starting at 7:05 p.m.
Find the daily, sport-by-sport Olympics 2018 schedule of events at nbcolympics.com/full-schedule
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