I’m also baffled at the love of late night sports events. When I grew up, there always seemed to be sports available Saturday and Sunday afternoon, Wide World of Sports and all that. I sure as hell didn’t stay up until 11:30 as a 5 year old watching the Olympics in '76.
Now, you can’t see a decent boxing match unless you spend $45, and stay up until 11:30 Saturday night for it to start. You want to watch a GOOD World Series game, you’re up until 12:30 since they’ll have a zillion pitching changes and every at bat takes twice as long, nice if you get up at 6am for work.
I think this is all a bit short sighted, you have to build a customer base for sports as well, not just squeeze the existing base for all its worth.
Absofuckinglutely. Sports are not for kids, but top level sports should be available to them. Kids should have been watching the top skaters, and not staying up until midnight to do it.
The agony of defeat! Yeah, things have changed. I also used to spend hours outside, rain or shine, playing unorganized sports with my friends. Nowadays it’s either highly organized, or it’s Madden 2006.
Here’s something you can really warm up to, Waverly. . .
I’m watching the women’s curling gold medal game on CNBC yesterday. They break into CNBC for a little update of what the markets did, and then without warning the announcer says, “In a surprise upset, neither Slutskaya nor Cohen won the gold medal.” and then goes on to say “catch all the action on NBC starting at 8:00”.
That was on CNBC. NBC’s partner. In their biggest event. Remarkable stupidity.
Just kidding as I knew not to enter such a thread if I wanted it to remain a secret. As it happens, these competitions (Winter Olympics) are ones in which I actually like to know the outcome before watching because it makes me look harder at the actual performance instead of getting behind the emotion of the event, but as a general rule I’m 100% behind the OP.
NBC news shows a pic of the medals and winner each night during both the local and the national broadcast but no audio is included and they in no uncertain terms warn you beforehand to look away if you don’t want to know. It a shame that same consideration hasn’t been extended to their website.
I was at a stupid fundraising meeting last night and we were talking about how it was the Grand Slam of t.v. We had Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol and the ladies free skate finals all on the same night. I told them that I was taping the Olympics and planned to watch it bright and early the next day so I wasn’t spoiled.
And do you know what this bitch did? She said, “Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I can tell you one thing. If you’re expecting Sasha Cohen to win, you’ll be disappointed. She fell twice.”
I just sat there, stunned. Finally I said steely, “Well, thanks for not ruining it for me.”
This is the same special brand of stupidity, but an even worse example than mine. Now you can’t even watch a telecast without them spoiloring for a sister channel.
You lasted later than I did. I stayed up, watching country after country send skaters in. Then they said Sasha Cohen coming up next, in the next group. There’s 6 to a group and they get a skating warm-up period, 4 minutes of skating, 2 minute of results, 2 minutes of commercials…so I just said F-it and went to bed. I knew how it turned out anyway.
I’m pretty vocal when I feel there is some small chance that I’ll be heard. In this case, I think that chance is zero, and I have chosen not to waste my time.
I watched who won hours before NBC started to show any skaters.