1. The reason there are profiles and stuff is to bring in people who don't really like sports (ie, women) because the Olympics need to have really high ratings to payout for the network. On top of the money they spend just to cover the thing, the fee they have to pay to the IOC is insane. (This is why the coverage from other media outlets is blacked out, like, you can't watch BBC video from a US IP address.)
2. I know that most of the people on my flist are watching the US coverage, but I always feel like they get an unfair rap because everyone's coverage is about their own contenders and then whoever the gold medalists are.
3. You can stream a lot of things online; I know people who are only watching the games online.
4. The show that is going for the broadest audience possible is the prime time show. They juggle a lot of events, and pile the most popular stuff into that show. There's a lot of coverage during the day that will show entire games all the way through—tons of boxing on CNBC and I watched a lot of water polo today.
5. The other major complaint is always that not enough events are shown live (though I think with the 12 hour time difference they're trying to show stuff that happens in the morning Beijing time live here in prime time, like the men's gymnastics tonight) but I know folks in the UK who are annoyed that the BBC is showing everything live because they don't want to have to stay up until 3am to watch what they want to watch.
I don't want to come off as an NBC apologist; I think Costas can get more than a little full of himself and isn't as gracious as Jim McKay was, and obviously they're taking a lot of sportscasters who are used to covering football and hauling them to China with little more than a briefing book and some DVDs. When I was a kid in the 70s, the Olympics were 100% about the cold war, about the medals race and how many did the Sovs have v the US, how many did the Eastern bloc have v the NATO countries. It was absurd. I'm actually impressed that there isn't a lot of weirdo jingoism being attached to the wins for China. So it could be a ton worse! It's just that I hear this complaint so many times and it's like, find me the country that isn't doing this and fine, you can knock NBC. There are plenty of reasons to knock the US and the media that's here; I'm just not sure this is a fair one.
Or is it just the entire set up of athletes in country-based teams?
no subject
2. I know that most of the people on my flist are watching the US coverage, but I always feel like they get an unfair rap because everyone's coverage is about their own contenders and then whoever the gold medalists are.
3. You can stream a lot of things online; I know people who are only watching the games online.
4. The show that is going for the broadest audience possible is the prime time show. They juggle a lot of events, and pile the most popular stuff into that show. There's a lot of coverage during the day that will show entire games all the way through—tons of boxing on CNBC and I watched a lot of water polo today.
5. The other major complaint is always that not enough events are shown live (though I think with the 12 hour time difference they're trying to show stuff that happens in the morning Beijing time live here in prime time, like the men's gymnastics tonight) but I know folks in the UK who are annoyed that the BBC is showing everything live because they don't want to have to stay up until 3am to watch what they want to watch.
I don't want to come off as an NBC apologist; I think Costas can get more than a little full of himself and isn't as gracious as Jim McKay was, and obviously they're taking a lot of sportscasters who are used to covering football and hauling them to China with little more than a briefing book and some DVDs. When I was a kid in the 70s, the Olympics were 100% about the cold war, about the medals race and how many did the Sovs have v the US, how many did the Eastern bloc have v the NATO countries. It was absurd. I'm actually impressed that there isn't a lot of weirdo jingoism being attached to the wins for China. So it could be a ton worse! It's just that I hear this complaint so many times and it's like, find me the country that isn't doing this and fine, you can knock NBC. There are plenty of reasons to knock the US and the media that's here; I'm just not sure this is a fair one.
Or is it just the entire set up of athletes in country-based teams?