Comments on: I Hate NBC

By: Di

Di — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 04:16:08 +0000

I hardly bother anymore with the coverage in “prime time” as it seems that the only sports that are shown are those in which the US has medaled (as in gold). Tonight was a good example, I figured out that this Carly(love how folks name their kids after soap opera characters) girl won the gold in gymnastics, checked the net and sure enough. So why bother to watch? You know the results without even checking the news.

By: digamma

digamma — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 22:53:03 +0000

Here’s what works for me. 1. Go to http://www.nbcolympics.com. 2. Click “TV LISTINGS” in the black menu bar. 3. Click the link that says “For a complete schedule of a sport during the Games, click here.” I won’t link it here because I think the front page has to set a cookie in your browser for to work. 4. Leave the word search blank. 5. Select “swimming” as the sport. 6. Select the widest possible date range. 7. Submit. This gets me a long list of scheduled swimming events. Some of them are on HDTV, but a lot are on NBC. (A search for dressage indicated that these listings also include Bravo where applicable.)

By: Michael G

Michael G — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:33:58 +0000

please don’t express surprise about NBC’s less than half-assed coverage. “up close and personal” bullshit designed to appeal strictly to 11 year old girls… anyway, i’ve sworn off all olympics coverage in the usa – summer, winter, hell spring and fall too. best of luck, though…

By: Dem

Dem — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 20:14:45 +0000

Time was (pre-1976) the US had the best Olympics coverage in the world. ABC was just flat-out outstanding. I forget the name of their host, but he was terrific. But, ABC sucked in their ratings so they decided to spice things up. Aaron Spelling. Howard Cosell. In 1976 time that used to be dedicated to actual sports was elimintated in favor of “Up Close and Personal” features of U.S. athletes. Tape delay was used extensively, which made no sense with the games being in Montreal. They borrowed from “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” (generally an excellent program) the technique of splitting an event into parts, and showing each part a little at a time as though it was live. Alas, the ratings soared. Probably due not to the style of the broadcast but due to general increase in interest in sports in the US plus the fact that it was on the same continent. But, network execs took note. In 1980 NBC pledged that they would show more of the Olympics live and get away from the “Up Close and Personal” stuff … but Carter boycotted them so it became a moot point. Then came 1984, The Capitalist Olympics. With the eastern bloc boycotting the US won almost everything. Huge ratings, and focus was on all US, all the time. Events were either scheduled for prime time(Gymanistics and Mary Lou Retton) or tape delayed (Greg Louganis). Everything was told from the US point of view, even Mary Decker’s stupidity. Non-US stories were very hard to find. The cast was set. All Olympics have followed the formula ever since.

By: nick

nick — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 08:04:53 +0000

NBC is showing the Olympics on six networks at once. Actually, no it isn’t. At most, two networks are broadcasting simultaneously. (And more often than not, one of those two will be Telemundo.) It’s more of a shift system, in which the affiliate networks take over during the small hours and the times when NBC has to take news coverage. Most egregious of all is that most live coverage so far has been devoted to qualifying rounds, even though finals were taking place; NBC has made sure that high-profile medal competitions do not get shown live, forcing people towards the vaseline-lensed primetime show (for which NBC has promised advertisers as 14.3 Nielsen rating). This means that one must avoid looking at news websites between 3pm and midnight to avoid knowing what the rest of the world has seen. For someone used to the BBC’s methodology—show the big finals live, no matter what the time difference, then reprise the highlights at prime time—it’s mindboggling. Will NBC show the men’s 200m freestyle final live at 12:45PM EDT? Nah. It’s not on the schedule at NBCOlympics.com. Will NBC force prime-time viewers to sit through much of the broadcast before showing the race, (on an 8-10 hour delay) thus keeping the advertisers happy? You betcha. Maybe my standards are too low, but that’s way better than any previous Olympics coverage I can remember in this country. Your standards are too low. But that’s because your standards have been set by NBC, and because the IOC doesn’t let you see what you’re missing.

By: maurinsky

maurinsky — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 07:29:34 +0000

I watched the mens cycling road race yesterday – sort of – I actually saw 3 minutes or so of action every other lap or so. What I thought was laughable was that we heard absolutely nothing about the guy who won the silver medal in that event, because no one in the booth knew who he was, he was just some dude from Portugal as far as they were concerned. I used to love to watch the Olympics when I was a kid, but between the end of the amateur athlete and the piss poor coverage, I’m one unhappy viewer.

By: jdw

jdw — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 05:54:35 +0000

Maybe I’m cynical, but… I think there’s something a little weird when somebody complains about schmaltzy, tedious, unbearably stupid athlete biopics, and also about the coverage of the opening ceremonies not being thorough enough.

By: Non Tibi Spiro

Non Tibi Spiro — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:19:12 +0000

Being an Olympics fan, I am glad I live in Europe. In Holland you get fulltime coverage of most events, with a special focus on those in which the Dutch participate. In Belgium the national VRT launched an extra tv-station just to cover all the sports this summer, including the Games. Here in France I got to watch the whole opening ceremony. It is sad that the coverage in the USA, one of the major contenders, is so poor. But I guess the attitude of the NBA players with regards to the national basketball team says it all.

By: Justin Slotman

Justin Slotman — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:13:55 +0000

Brian—We could have more live stuff, it is true. I don’t think the schedule is all that erratic. Bravo has judo at midnight every night, and is the home of all the projectile-over-net sports. Telemundo has a lot of soccer. USA puts on….random sports….at random times. But they did have the whole entire women’s road race live this morning. Look, I won’t pretend the coverage is perfect, but if I can watch live handball (Korea vs Russia) at two in the morning this morning, I don’t have anything to complain about. Maybe my standards are too low, but that’s way better than any previous Olympics coverage I can remember in this country.

By: Keith

Keith — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 15:08:19 +0000

I watched the opening ceremonies last night on NBC — it was the most vapid coverage possible. Bob Costas and Katie Couric were jingoistic, callous, ignorant, parochial yahoos. Agreed, Sean. It was infuriating. They stopped the parade of nations every five minutes for a string of commercials, then played catch up, showing us who came in while they were away. God forbid they don’t show commercials, or only do at, say, half hour intervals. By the end of it, I wanted to strangle Cattie Curic with Bob Costas’s entrails.

By: Shai

Shai — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 10:37:37 +0000

well I spoke far too soon. apparently cnbc, msnbc, bravo are blacked out here (on cable, not sure about local satellite), but whatever live(ish) events the canadian channels have, without cnbc, msnbc, bravo there is no badminton, rifles, handball, early soccer, even if the american coverage is really limited itself with all the repeats (ie only events with US teams participating). people apparently arent interested enough to put recordings online (via torrent or whatever) and now that I think about it, half of brian’s point is moot because outside of the most high profile events you always have to rely on the intersection of homeland participation (US, Canada, Japan, etc) with your own country of choice. it’s even worse for cosmopolitan fans of particular sports. i think we’ll have to wait until this all becomes feasible using broadband or video on demand, which will be around 2020 if we’re lucky.

By: lone star liberal

lone star liberal — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 04:36:10 +0000

Agree completely with Brian—NBC is worthless. Yesterday afternoon, I had a friend call from Paris, asking if I was watching the opening ceremonies. Of course not—it’s only the rest of the world that is watching that event live, without commercial interruptions. I would see it hours later, packed with commercials and overrun with innane commentary (including a ridiculous number of references to 9/11). Hoping the coverage today would be better, I have been wildly disappointed. This evening, all the day’s events have been boiled down to cloying, personal profiles. Meanwhile, everyone with a computer, learned the results much earlier in the day. Anyone who has seen a real network (say the BBC) cover the Olympics, knows that NBC is a catastrophe.

By: lone star liberal

lone star liberal — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 04:35:22 +0000

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 02:51:14 +0000

Justin, the coverage may be on six networks, but very few of them are doing anything live, or at predictable times. Notice how they have to put it in big print when anything is LIVE on their schedules – on any of the six channels. But maybe it will get better as we go through.

By: Justin Slotman

Justin Slotman — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 02:39:22 +0000

Are you people completely high? NBC is showing the Olympics on six networks at once. Coverage will be 24/7 for the duration of the Olympics. Tonight I watched table tennis and boxing and Germany pull the upset over Australia in field hockey. Around midnight I will watch the judo finals. Tomorrow morning, if I wake up in time, I will watch China play Spain live in basketball. Except for not showing the opening live—and having Costas and Couric talk over it—NBC has done very little wrong thus far.