Winter Olympics: What NBC Cut and Added for Opening Ceremony

With the 2018 Winter Olympics taking place in Pyeongchang, South Korea, (a full 14 hours ahead of the Eastern Standard Time), NBC opted to show a replay of the Opening Ceremony in primetime on Saturday night.

Dedicated fans of the Olympics were able to watch the ceremony live online on NBC Sports’, but some ended up also watching the replay. Some of those viewers, including Timothy Burke over at Deadspin, noticed NBC made a few changes to its broadcast that differed from the original live stream.

According to Burke the ceremony had a full 23 minutes cut out.

Scenes that were chopped off the broadcast included South Korea’s flag procession, portion of the team entrance for Mexico, Sweden and Germany, portions of speeches from Lee Hee-Beom and Thomas Bach and the Olympic Oath taken by the athletes.

But one part that was actually extended in the broadcast was the introduction of the United States team, along with the appearance of Vice President Mike Pence.

In real time, the introduction only took 62 seconds before the next team was introduced. But NBC managed to stretch it out over seven minutes thanks to looping multiple parts. Fans were able to point this out when they noticed “Gagnam Style”, the 2012 Korean pop single, had multiple parts of the song be played over and over.

Burke also pointed out that NBC aired a half-hour promo for the Olympics prior to airing the ceremony and that had they not aired that they would’ve had enough room to air the full replay.

The Olympics will air daily on NBC until Sunday, Feb. 25.