I can not believe how poor NBC's coverage of the Olympics is (and how little criticism they are getting for it). I've got DirecTV which advertises the fact that there are 7 Olympic channels. Fantastic. Last night while the 100m sprint heats were being run 6 of those channels had non-Olympic programming, while NBC showed continual shots of Michael Phelps getting a leg massage or gymnasts wringing hands between performances. Oviously NBC aren't willing to have any of their non-rating channels (like MSNBC, CNBC or UHD) steal ratings off NBC in prime-time, so instead of broadcasting live olympic action they show re-runs of Law and Order. I came home from work early today and figured I'd get to see some replays of last nights hockey, Cycling, Beach Volleyball or athletics action, but apparently from 1pm to 7pm NBC have non-Olympic programming (including repeats of Ellen and Oprah) and there other 6 "dedicated Olympic channels" have one olympic broadcast between them (USA vs Cuba baseball). The opening ceremony was on at around 7am US time last Friday. No-one in the USA got to see it until 12 hours later. The cycling road race was at threat of being delayed because of haze. Reports were that NBC were furious at that because it could impact their programming. WTF!!! We got to see a grand total of 20 minutes of highlights about 6 hours after the event had finished. It's a ****ing disgrace.
I agree, this coverage SUCKS! What makes it worse is they havent put a CLEAR schedule out there. I never know whats on until I turn the tv on.
NBC has gone down for me. If it wasn't for The Office and Heroes I wouldn't even watch it. The Olympics has been poorly broadcasted. I know it's halfway around the world but still.
Maybe I am not following the right media, but why isn't there more outrage over this? The Australian broadcaster has a single channel, and when they dared to show a live Australian football match instead of some of the early olympic events every media outlet in Australia was bashing them over it and demanding action.
The mens 100m sprint is on tomorrow morning 9:30 CT in the US. According to NBC's official website, this will be telecast 9 hours later at 6:30pm. What a crock!!!! Why not show it live??? If this is correct, you have no idea how pissed off I am.
And another thing. Since when did the Olympic medal tally get sorted by Total medals?? Every Olympics I recall has sorted the table by gold medals. The official Olympics site sorts the table by Gold medals. Here are USAToday's medal charts from the last two olympics. http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/athens/medals.aspx (2004 Olympics medal tally - USA Today) http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/medals.aspx (2008 Olympics medal tally - USA Today) I am still amazed at how much the American media insults the intelligence of their viewers. It's almost like they have not realized that the advent of the internet allows people to sort through information and find the truth, despite what is paraded in front of them by the major networks.
Well, I was alive in 1992, when it was pay per view. So we've made progress. 1992 was a mess. Nobody bought that package and we missed everything except for the dream team, which was pretty good all by itself. I'm just glad it is all free. As soon as we get the Titans into this thing in 2012 I'll be exctatic. HD olympics are awesome though. The olympics are more less 2 weeks to change the entertainment pace a little, and they do a good job of it, but most people I think could care less about them now. Phelps helped out a lot, but if it weren't for him, the opening ceremony would have been the best part. I think the last time the olympics really engaged me was the summer of 84 when I was like 13. It seemed like they were important to me then because nothing else was on tv. I'm oversaturated with sports now. Which is a good thing, but the olympics are shoved way to the back because of it.
I watched the replay of my favorite all-time athlete running his final 10,000m event today (Haille Gebrasellaise). He is one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen and in his likely olympic finale on the track, I would have thought NBC could have broadcast the race live. At the time of his race, they were re-running swimming highlights from the previous night. Maybe I have been spoiled in Australia. We have one channel broadcasting the olympics and they virtually run 24-hr coverage. Almost every event is live, they just seem to do a much better job of switching from venue to venue.