• Gigaom, Wednesday, June 8, 2011 3:33 PM

You know how NBC used to hold back tape of marquee events so they could run first in prime time? Well, that practice -- which once made sense but no longer does in the age of the Internet and social media broadcasting sports results in real time -- should end with the next Olympics broadcast. That's when the company will "make every event available on one platform or another" as it happens, according to reports cited by Gigaom's Ryan Lawlor.

However, "while the ability to watch live streams of Olympic events will be a welcome addition for viewers, it's likely to come with some tradeoffs," he writes."Because so much of the Olympic content will be distributed through NBC Universal cable networks like USA and MSNBC, it will likely rely on authentication to prove that viewers are cable subscribers to view live streams of online content."

Read the whole story at Gigaom »