OK. So nowdays we can expect focus on the US athletes to the exclusion of all the others, (and endless “athelete profiles” and other fluff pieces and lots of talking heads in studios instead of actual sports). But this Olympics seems particulary bad, to the point I’ve given up watching. Anyone else agree? (And it’s almost impossible to watch stuff on the web site without stumbling onto spoilers.
The thing which really disgusted me was the hour of coverage of World War II on Saturday night. The other thing that annoyed me was the day they spent twenty minutes on the Magnificent Seven Gymnasts from Atlanta.
Otherwise, it was ok. I’d rather they covered more sports in less depth, and I wish they’d spend less time talking about what will come up after I go to bed, and a lot less time on beach volleyball and indoor volleyball, but, really it was ok.
Nope. The Amurkan athletes are the only ones who matter. Fuck the rest of the world.
USA! USA! USA!
Back in ye olden dayes, before NBC got the Olympics, it was fun to see the more obscure sports, or get to see underdog countries win gold. Occasionally, there’d even be a blipbio on non-American athletes.
Now, with NBC, if they’re showing any obscure sport on one of their main channels, it’s certain that the American won gold. Furthermore, they’ll only show brief highlights of the American’s performance, and only mention any other competitors in passing.
Bad enough, but this Olympics NBC has gone beyond the pale: Ryan Seacrest, doing fluff pieces. Ugh.
Wakey, wakey, Rip Van Winkle, it isn’t 1996 anymore! If you’re only watching the evening highlights on NBC (and it sounds like you are) then yes, you are getting a highly produced, tape-delayed production meant for American viewers. Of course it shows the most popular events for American audiences - it is in prime time.
Meanwhile, at least three other channels were showing other events live for about 12 hours a day for two weeks straight - including rowing, badminton, table tennis, equestrian, and fencing, among others.
Want to see Michael Phelps or Missy Franklin or the women’s gymnastics live when it happens? NBC.com has it for you. Same as left-handed women’s summer biathlon that happens at 3:30 AM EST. NBC.com has it for you live in Hi-Def. No commercials either.
If four channels, three of them live for 12 hours a day, plus every single event shown live (bar none) on NBC.com isn’t good enough, I’d suggest writing a sternly worded letter to the City of London telling them to move to a more convenient time zone for you if they want to host another Olympics in the future.
Goddamn I hate that websites somehow think it’s ok to spoil sporting events. The online NBC coverage is awesome, but would it really fucking kill them to not spoil events? Why can’t they just have a “Did Phelps win? Click here to find out!” banner? Why the hell do they have to announce results right there in my face? Bastards.
The primetime NBC coverage sucks. Everything else is very good.
The main problem I have is when they decide to show something in primetime, they cut it out of any of their other coverage, and the primetime treatment is often inferior–case in point, the indoor women’s volleyball gold medal game. It involved the US, so they put it in primetime, but I guess they didn’t want to focus on it for the 1.5-2 hours a 4-set game goes, so we got all of about 20 minutes of it, while the non-US bronze medal game was broadcast in full earlier in the day on NBC Sports.
Yeah, WTF was that? Pointless BS. They could have showed an hour more of the US vs. Brazil women’s gold medal volleyball match, but probably cut that because the US women lost. I don’t care if that’s unsubstantiated, NBC has and continue to be very US-centric as they have admitted. I fully believe they cut that match and other stuff they could have shown because of the US’s performance
Right at the beginning they aired the men’s cycling road race from start to finish live. Hours of coverage of a sport not many Americans are passionate about and which no American had a decent chance of winning. After that I was willing to give them a pass on pretty much anything.
(I’m no big fan of the NBC coverage either - who is? - but am willing to cut them a little slack…)
You know what? Not all of us live in houses with cable or dish or whatever allowing us to watch more than what was broadcast by NBC. And not all of us have flexible schedules, or much patience for fussing with websites in hopes of getting something–and picking what to watch online seemed like it could be overwhelming. So I didn’t bother.
I want a 2-3 hour highlights package, so I can sit back, knit, and get a taste of the Games with as little effort as possible.
(And I don’t understand complaints about all American Athletes All the Time-- I got plenty of coverage of Usain Bolt and Oscar what’s his name with the no feet. To name just two).
And mostly, NBC delivered. But a few times, I was annoyed, because I didn’t think it was too much to ask that they use all of their time to focus on events occurring this year.
Sigh. Someone (me) is cranky and tired and needs to go to bed–obviously I watched too much of the Closing Ceremonies, which were Meh. I give the organizers props for including so many British Icons–including some that I didn’t know were British, but assume that they must be based on their inclusion. But otherwise, Meh.
I want the NBC commentators to shut the fuck up. And if I never have to see a feel-good interview with an athlete again, it’ll be too soon.
Too much blah-blah. Too much glurgification of the athletes. Too much jingoism. Far, far too little footage of the actual events. Yes, I know I could have seen more on NBC’s cable channels or on the internet, but I don’t have cable or satellite and watching videos on the internet when you live in BFE is an exercise in frustration.
This.
Ryan F’ing Seacrest doing reports on social media. WTF?
plus
Beach Volleyball over exposure
Track and Field under exposure
A combined 10 minutes on high jump and pole vault and 20 hours of beach volleyball? AYFKM?
However, I give them BIG credit for covering the soccer games without commercials.
and…
Mary Carillo was hilarious when she refused to play “what is the social media saying” game with Tamryn Hall. The disgusted look on her face was priceless.
That took some serious ovaries, maybe Bob Costas should grow some.
Do we dare hope, with Rio being only 1 hr ahead of ET, that we might see more 2016 coverage live? Didn’t think so.
The History Channel documentary Saturday night really pissed me off. I could only stay up for five of the six dives in the platform diving final, and missed a great ending. Had they started coverage at 8 like they were supposed to, I might have actually seen the whole thing.
It was commented last night that the lack of significant time change in Rio would ease many problems associated with the broadcasts from London and spoiling the results.
Better question: Does anyone NOT hate the US Olympic coverage.
Seriously. It’s pre-recorded. So what’s your excuse for causing us to MISS stuff when you cut to commercial?
Also, for the love of Bob, we don’t care about your interviews with the parents of American athletes. Just show us the games.
If it was remotely possible to watch Missy Franklin, Michael Phelps, or any of the major track events live through the NBC website or apps without major issues, I’d agree with you. Unfortunately, it wasn’t: for any major event, NBC’s bandwidth was insufficient for the demand, and you (or me, at least, and most people writing and talking about it) either got immediately dropped off or a resolution that was probably worse than being dropped. Due to the policy of not offering any replays on anything that was being aired that evening in prime time, there was no ability to spread out that demand either, and it made most of the big events unwatchable live. Note that the ads that you had to watch every time you reconnected always managed to get through, though.
Outside of that, I actually think NBC did significantly better this Olympics than they have in the past. The only other massive sins, I think, were not having any way to watch the Opening Ceremonies live, and choosing not to show the men’s 100m final live. The latter one in particular was indefensible: the biggest 10 seconds of the games happening at 4:50 Eastern on a Sunday, literally everyone else in the world gets to watch it live regardless of time zone, and it has to sit until after 11pm local time to be seen in the US.
Of course, they look much worse if you compare them to the BBC coverage, but one of those is publicly funded and one isn’t.
re: Rio, I am cautiously optimistic, but mostly over the fact that they have four more years to get bandwidth in place for internet viewing rather than over any thoughts that NBC’s TV presentation will improve. I’d give decent odds that NBC will still try to rearrange things so that they’re showing the biggest events at 10:30-11:30 Eastern instead of 6:30-8:30 (when they’d be live), and god forbid you’re another 3 hours behind on the West Coast.