Real Time; "plausibly live"

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:40 AM -0400 9/29/00, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>REAL TIME--The Olympics are brought to you in "real time."  It used to be
>"tape delay."

I haven't heard "real time" for THESE Olympics in the NBC broadcasts
(or CNBC/MSNBC cablecasts) to the U.S. unless it was in the scope of
negation.  It could of course be used for much of the Canadian and
presumably European coverage.  The "real time" I've heard on other
occasions is a retronym (cf. "real life") used to contrast live
broadcasts from tape-delayed ones--other Olympics  have been
broadcast with a mix of the two and the annotation would show which a
particular event was.  (I also used to enjoy the reporters explaining
"This is now".)  Now, at least when the games are in Asia or
Australia, it's all taped (and often brutally edited) by NBC but
we're supposed to pretend it's live, whence the absence of annotation
and the promulgation of the term "plausibly live".  I wonder what the
first cite of THAT expression is, and I'd like to nominate it for
Euphemism of the Year (it's certainly not new, much less brand-new,
but NBC has certainly brought it into focus).

larry