Some folks have been complaining, as happens every time, about how the network arranges its Olympic coverage. It’s too easy to have results before the event, so watching it in prime time is boring; it’s annoying to only see a few athletes instead of whole competitions all the way through; those feature pieces are annoying; etcetera.
I’m actually not annoyed at all, though. I take care not to get results during the day. For two weeks every four years, I can turn off the NPR and avoid the WaPo website. (I do the same thing during March Madness.) I’ve sometimes even resorted to changing my voice mail greeting, so that callers won’t inadvertently supply me with results. It’s not that difficult.
Then, I DVR the prime time coverage. This way, I can start viewing from the recording buffer, which lets me fast forward through commercials, feature stories that don’t interest me (and some of them can be sort of sweet. I’m still a girl, after all), and events that are lame like ski cross (ugh) and women’s halfpipe (zzzzzzz). For instance, on Monday I watched the new Top Gear episode before switching over to my Olympic recording. It worked out great!
And finally; look. People can bitch all they want about the figure skating, but here’s the thing: it’s no accident that the figure skating events are the ones that have been live in the end of prime time. It’s because the Canadian organizers of the event, which is taking place on the West Coast in the Pacific time zone, care just as much about ratings (especially in the Eastern part of Canada, where most of the people actually live — just like the US! Uncanny!) as any other entertainment executives would, and deliberately made it so that they would be broadcast in prime time. And that’s because chicks who don’t like ANY OTHER SPORT, always watch it.
Oh, and yes, I watched the Russia-Czech Republic and USA-Canada hockey games on MSNBC. They were awesome games! I hope the sport picks up new American fans! The coverage was good (largely due to the presence of Mike Emrick and the absence of Al Michaels), but then I still watched the figure skating too. Yes, I stayed up past midnight the next night, to watch the ice dancing finals and the medal ceremony.
In the end, I’m just a sports fan. I know what to expect from multi-sport coverage, so I prepare to make the viewing experience as enjoyable as I can. Sometimes it’s not so easy, but I try anyway. Why is that so hard for people?
And, since I am, at heart, just a sports fan, what does the Olympic coverage always make me long for? The Wide World Of Sports.
- Lyric of the day: “I’d go for broke if I could be wit chu”
- Flashback of the day: Vacationing in AK during the ‘96 summer games. SB bursting in at the end of each day, asking, “Whose butt did we kick today?!”
- What’s playing now? Cage the Elephant’s “Back against the Wall,” off Cage the Elephant.
- Photo of the day:
Teddy is pleased; pitchers and catchers reported this week!
