The Breakfast Meeting: Social Media Complicates the Olympics, and a Digital Focus at Time Inc.

By NOAM COHEN

NBC's reliance on tape delay for the biggest Olympics events may be a time-tested strategy for maximizing the prime-time audience, but in the Tweet-it-now world of social media those frustrated by the practice have a place to complain, Richard Sandomir writes. And complain they have, organizing around the hashtag #NBCFail, and creating fake accounts like NBCDelayed, which has 13,000 followers, with posts like “BREAKING: Jesse Owens wins gold in 100m sprint.” The network can point to its stellar ratings - 40.7 million viewers for the opening ceremony and 28.7 million for the first night of competition Saturday - to argue that it must be doing something right.

• Another defense of tape-delay from NBC is that it is live streaming every event, via nbcolympics.com, Mr. Sandomir writes. And while there have been complaints of losing the stream at particularly important times - the swimming race between Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps on Saturday, for example - the growth in streaming has been notable. On Saturday, the first day of competition, there were 7 million live streams, up from 1.6 million on the comparable day in Beijing. Total videos streamed through Saturday, including highlights and replays, stand at 13.2 million, compared with 5.2 million in Beijing.
• The “Today” show, which lately has been facing extraordinarily close ratings competition from ABC's “Good Morning America,” is getting a much-needed boost from NBC's exclusive rights to the Olympics, Brian Stelter writes. Some would go so far as to see the event as giving “Today” â€" which dominated mornings for some 16 years - as a chance to hit the reset button. But the show's co-hosts are loath to see it that way; after all, part of what morning shows like “Today” are offering is the comfort of the familiar. As one of those co-hosts, Matt Lauer, put it: “Do we look at it as, ‘Boy, we have to make or break it in these two weeks and then go back and be different people than we were before'? Absolutely not. We still have to go back and do the same show we want to do - and were doing before we got here.”
• One clear influence of social media is how athletes can let the public into worlds that normally would have been off-limits. Kevin Love, of the United States men's basketball team, considers himself the team's unofficial photographer, Greg Bishop writes; a favorite shot of his is the “gotem” photograph â€" that is “got ‘em” â€" when he catches teammates as they sleep. Nate McMillan, a former N.B.A. star and an assistant coach of the team, said: “It's reality. That's what everybody wants now. They want reality TV. They want the instant photographs. The cameras are there, in our locker rooms, huddles, interviewing coaches during games. What happens on the bus was once sacred. Now, it's part of what the fans want to see.”
• A sampling of Mr. Love's photog raphy

Laura Lang, the new chief executive of Time Inc., is enlisting for the task insights from her previous job running Digitas, the digital advertising firm. As such, Amy Chozick writes, Ms. Lang views the company not as a magazine publisher but as a branded news and entertainment company. That company, which publishes titles like People, Time and Sports Illustrated, has assets in its readership - print and online magazines reach 130 million unduplicated consumers a month and the publisher has 65 million households in its database - that would be considered a treasure trove in Silicon Valley, Ms. Lang argues.