I see where NBC's resident loon, Zucker, is crowing about the audience and profits from the Olympics. What he doesn't seem to understand is that the Olympics are a rare (once every four years) sports event: which merely means that you can charge a premium for live sports content that is of interest to people. Watching a sporting event after you already know what happened just isn't that exciting, so the vendor who can successfully build a wall around the viewing will do well.

Which doesn't say anything about less premium content. Like, say, an episode of Heroes. If I leave on a trip, I'll still be interested in watching it when I return - and NBC's psychotic policy of pulling stuff from hulu as it ages simply tells people "get thee off to the torrents". Likewise, their annoying practice of starting shows a minute or two off the hour merely serves to irritate - every DVR around can compensate for that.

What Zucker is doing is confusing a one off for a trend. I'm sure he's happy about the Olympic results, but those won't translate into anything meaningful for the fall.

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