Wall Street Journal gets the jump on NBC with hilarious Olympic swimming re-creation

You're a world famous media outlet. You'd like to show a little Olympic video, especially when a citizen of your home country does something extraordinary in London.

Problem is, somebody else (NBC) paid huge dollars for the exclusive rights to all of that outstanding footage and they can do whatever they like with it, when they like. What do you do, to try and get around that?

When The Wall Street Journal got wind of American Missy Franklin's astonishing gold medal performance in the 100-metre backstroke Monday, they decided to creatively break the exclusive rights hold NBC has on the video. With NBC's decision to not show Franklin's feat live, instead holding it for a prime time airing last night, The WSJ jumped them, with this popsicle stick and string re-creation:

They aren't the first to pull this kind of light-hearted stunt.

It's been done many times before, but it never seems to get old. Check out Conan O'Brien's re-creation of Tim Tebow's overtime touchdown pass from last season's NFL playoff game between the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers:

If Canada wins rowing gold in either the men's or women's eights this week, I fully expect the Canadian broadcast consortium to give us some of that creativity. Plastic spoons would make great oars.