Why Olympics coverage in the U.S. sucks

I started into something like this line of argument in the car the other day and my wife said “You give this speech every four years”, so I had to stop. But that doesn’t stop it from being true!

(the Russian one so I could sing along in Hungarian, hah)

I’ve known lots of French people quite well over the years, and they (well, those of my generation, I’m currently in my late 20s) have never known the words to the Marseillaise. My current flatmate is the first person I’ve met who does—and he’s from Budapest, and knows it in Hungarian and Hungarian only.

hey, i’m from germany and i think our tv coverage is like the hungarian one. we can watch lots of competitions, even if germans are not involved.

Agree 100%. Glad I’ll be watching it in Europe. In home country in fact.

Right on. I’ve lived in Germany and been there for lots of major sporting events (skiing world cup, Olympics, tennis, etc.). They show a great breadth of the games and winners from all countries. I’ve always found that sort of coverage much more fun and engaging – as opposed to rags to riches bios of every single American athlete.

I just watched the BBC coverage of the opening ceremony, and they showed representatives of every country. That’s what impartiality gets you, I guess.

Agreed. I’ve hated this always. Used to be at least the US was crappy in the winter Olympics, so you saw lots of Austrians and Scandinavians. Somehow the “USA, USA” hockey craze in 1980 or so even changed that.

I think every country has a little of this tendency, but the chauvinism is relatively muted. Four years ago in Italy, I learned more about some Italian archer than I wanted to (and I speak no Italian). Slovenia was even better, but they were hoping for at most 2-4 medals from their athletes, and could hardly put all their programming on them. But the US coverage is really sickening.

And, hey, don’t get me started on the “human interest” pieces ….

Australia’s coverage is just as bad, Eszter. I have seen major sports just disappear from the screen at the final stage, because an aussie was knocked out, to be replaced by the preliminary stages of some useless game where an aussie is still playing. It’s absolutely shocking.

The British coverage is best, because it goes through 3 distinct phases that are highly entertaining:

1. this is the best team ever! ra ra! Prepare to wipe the floor with the whole rest of the world!
2. we lost… oh woe, whoever saw this coming? How can it be?
3. that was the worst team ever! What is so wrong with England that we are so shit at sport? Should we blame the yoof, the players, or foreigners? Let’s blame all 3 in an orgy of hatred!! Let’s all watch re-runs of the 1966 world cup!

My favorite Olympics coverage was from Barcelona 1992, which I watched in Germany. The organizers had put a lot off effort into making even the most obscure and viewer-unfriendly disciplines (shooting, sailing) interesting, and German tv spent at least a modicum of time covering each of them. Atlanta 1996, which I watched in the U.S., was horrible, and I only checked in the last two times to see if anything had changed. (Hadn’t.) In addition to all the jingoism watching the Olympics in the U.S. one always gets the impression it’s the female gymnastics world championship with some other sideshow competitions happening in the wings. During Winter Olympics, it’s figure skating.

The nationalistic skewing of which events are covered is annoying, but worse are the protracted background stories. I would rather watch a thirty-minute speedwalking semi-final than another cloying story of how some athlete overcame Some Great Adversity.

But sg, it’s going to be the best year ever for Team GB, the politician said so! We have targets!

There was a story going around 8 years ago that when the amazing Steve Redgrave won his fifth Olympic gold in his fifth consecutive Olympics the US coverage of the race mentioned him (or his team mates- Matthew Pinsent was getting his third gold) not at all but concentrated the US team coming 4th (or some other non-medal winning place). This may well be apocryphal, but it seems vaguely borne out in the sentiment if not the detail by this post and the comments.

Myself, I rather like finding a sport (preferably a bit obscure) I know nothing about and becoming an armchair expert over the Olympic period. Last time it was synchronised diving – I never did get to the bottom of the scoring system – but that’s rather spoiled (in a good way) this year by the presence in that event of the British 14 year old.

It is true. The hypocrisy of the Olympics is only exceeded by the hypocrisy of the coverage here in the States. I am actually a huge sports fan, and I think the primary reason that I hate the Olympics is that it pretends to not be about the money. I expect to watch very little of the coverage this time around. All the human interest crap and the uninteresting race-oriented events the USA is good at are just not very good programming.

Well, George sort of stole my thunder, but I’ll go ahead anyway…

One year here in the San Diego area I had access to CBC coverage via an old C-band satellite dish (surprisingly with no blackouts or subscription requirements).

It was a breath of fresh air to see coverage directed at actual sports fans and to find out that there were many nations sending very fine athletes to a whole bunch of different events. Who knew? (I agree with someone above that the US coverage seems to have gotten worse in these aspects over the last 20 or 30 years or so. My solution now is just not to watch.)

Apparently there are still people who believe the purpose of the media is to report fairly on news events.

In fairness, I was in Brazil for part of the 2006 Winter Olympics and the amount of coverage given to a Brazil snowboarder who finished ninth because all three of her competitors collided was a bit over the top.

What is interesting is how heavily covered the Pan Am Games are trhough the rest of the Americas outside of the US.

Do you think that the American television coverage should choose not to cover Americans? Just because of the size of the country, a lot of Americans compete, and win, in the Summer Olympics. For most of them this is the crowning moment of their lives, and the culmination of years of dreams work. It seems churlish to say that the home country media should ignore their success. But if the home country media doesn’t ignore their success, there isn’t a lot of time for anything else.

Last time out I lived in Britain with no TV. The BBC (Radio) Five Live coverage was as wretched a jingoistic travesty as you could reasonably hope ever to hear.

Alison Curbishley (for it was she) spent so much time breathlessly eulogising St Paula of Radcliffe before the marathon, to the extent of claiming that the Japanese runners worshipped her as a goddess, and I kid you not, that I for one wept tears of genuine joy when the Anointed One pulled out. (Having apparently neglected to consider that Athens in August might be on the warm side.)

Now I live in the Netherlands, but I will be spending next week on a campsite, and I aim not even to know who wins the inaugural wimmin’s steeplechase.

I’d make an exception for the honkbal‘s last hoorah, if I had TV coverage to hand, and there is surely no one outside the Free and Democratic Republic itself who isn’t hoping it gets comprehensively stuffed in the basketball (go Latvia! or Lithuania! whichever is the one that’s good at basketball…), but they’ll have to do it without me this time.

Congratulations Eszter on saying exactly what has been on my mind. I absolutely hate the US’ Olympic Coverage. It is atrocious. I echo ever single word about not showing any event except where the US is a participant or a key player. For 18 years (the time I have lived in the States) now I have not been able to see great events. It is sad. Thank God for the Internet where I could see the opening ceremony LIVE with the rest of the world.

That and improv.

Only if they were allowed to keep the Canadians.

where the viewers can cheer a likely medallist

.. except that you’re ignoring the many comments about (and the reality of) how much coverage in the U.S. is not about sports at all. They are human interest stories. I wonder if there’s info out there about proportion of sports vs other material that gets broadcast as Olympics coverage.

You should watch CBC where you will not know that the US, China or Russia are the major winners in the Olympics. Instead you can see plucky countries stick it to the man and Canadian athletes happy to make the finals.

The fact is that the broadcasters need to attract a mass audience, and many Americans simply don’t care about most Olympic sports. Hence the “human interest” segments, and the effort to create some sort of rooting interest by focusing on American participants.

Boring for those who care about the sports? Sure. But for a huge percentage of US sports fans, as Salazar says, the Olympics are just an interlude before football starts and baseball finishes.

I don’t know, Bruce. You might be right, but I don’t see any reason why the networks would be motivated by anything but business concerns, and I suspect they have pretty good data as to what people watch and don’t watch.

My own opinion is that they are giving viewers what they think viewers want, and that they are probably, though not necessarily, right.

What what does NBC pay for broadcast rights vs the various European networks? NBC is obviously providing the coverage they think will attract the ratings that will justify the huge investment they’ve made. Is NBC making an error in judgment? Would ratings in the U.S. really be higher if they covered more team handball games between Hungary and the Czech Republic?

Slocum – NBC paid $770 million for the US rights – they were the high bidder. A European consortium of national networks paid $440 for the European rights. They were not the high bidder – the IOC rejected a Murdoch bid that was higher. The reason, I would guess, is that the IOC needs the support of the European national governments and that means making sure that the games are on the national networks, not on Murdoch’s channels.

The difference in cost means that the European channels have the luxury of treating the Olympics as a sporting event, while NBC must maximize viewership by attracting and holding viewers who don’t care much about sports but like a good story.

That, plus what Salazar and roac said, is the reason that the US Olympics coverage sucks.

PS – this being my first comment on one of your posts in a while, I hope it’s not too late to offer congratulations to you, Eszter, on winning tenure! Best wishes for a long and successful career, and may you keep on entertaining and enlightening us on Crooked Timber.

I was in China during the 2004 games and it was far more slanted than even the U.S. coverage. Clip reels of Chinese success was intercut with their U.S. competitors failing. The whole thing had far less of the human interest and color commentary stories that NBC loves so much but it made up for it with a stream of heavily edited Chinese dominated sports (and women’s basketball) repeated multiple times through the day.

“that what women want is (1) human interest stories and (2) gymnastics in the summer, figure skating in the winter.”

What strange and mysterious creatures us women are! Thank for concisely reducing my interests and experience to one “study” someone (a man, I deduce) once did.

Swiss coverage is nearly 24-hour and available on several channels, in three languages. If the announcers get too jingoistic (and at least the Swiss-German ones tend to, though the Swiss have little opportunity for such in the Summer Olympics), you can switch to Austrian, French, German or Italian coverage — also nearly 24 hours a day. Eurosport has English/German coverage here that is literally around-the-clock and shows all events: swim heats of all kinds (on right now), archery, table tennis, badminton (judging by past years) and all sorts of other stuff that doesn’t get nearly enough advertising support in the States to be worth broadcasting.

I too was ready for all-USA coverage, but have been presently surprised by non-US action. Angola-France in women’s team handball is on right now…

Hey I am an Aussie and just thought I’d throw my two cents in about how the coverage is here.

The coverage seems to be biased towards showing Australians during “normal” viewing hours as far as I can tell, however late at night (as it is here now) they show a broader cross-section: I am currently switching between USA vs Japan women’s Volleyball and Russia vs Latvia women’s Basketball!

The coverage is being shown on 2 channels, Channel 7 has coverage rights (It is atrocious, with stupid commentators, millions of advertisements, and an uninteresting array of sports – this is the australians only biased channel) and SBS (which is the “foreign” channel, showing a broader range or sports etc). The only problem is that both of these are on free to air tv, no cable tv coverage, which means million of ads… It is so annoying!
The main coverage on Channel 7 is also terrible as there is no set programming… They will switch between sports however they please to show where the “action” is (or should I say, wherever the Australians are?). This means you might be getting right into something, when they switch it with no warning or anything.
Not only this, but you have no idea which sports are on when? I personally don’t enjoy sitting through archery, shooting, and equestrian, but it seems there is no choice here unless you want to miss the good sports (depending on personal taste of course – no offence meant to archery, shooting and equestrian fans :) ).
I am just glad we don’t have the uplifting overcoming adversity stories the US seems to.. I think I would just turn the whole thing off!

NBC is so far this morning fairly US-centric (volleyball; all-US sabre finals) but I haven’t seen any Americans yet on Universal; I’d imagine Telemundo will be heavily Latin America-centric, etc. The sheer amount of coverage this year will make it very difficult to be US-centric, even if they wanted to.

In fact, I just noticed that on my cable system I not only have about a half-dozen channels of english coverage, I also have coverage in Mandarin and Korean.

So, yeah, I think this may have been a valid complaint at some point in the past… but probably not so much anymore.

(And note that generally I agree with the criticism- American sports coverage is pathetically narrow and parochial. Every time I go to Europe and see how much deeper and broader European sports coverage is, it makes me cry. But like I said, the vastness of the Olympic coverage right now, at least on the first day, seems to make the criticism mostly moot in this particular case.)

I lived in the States for twenty years and the past six years in China.

It’s no difference. China only play its anthem on TV here too. China does win lots of gold medals though. I guess when a TV station paid so much money for the broadcasting rights; their first concern is ratings; diversity of coverage doesn’t mean ratings; national pride does. After the first day of Beijing Olympic coverage; it’s the same.

China has three national tv stations moving from events to events. I still don’t feel it’s enough stations. China should have at least 7 of their national stations showing different events from prelims to finals. Now with only 3 stations; they are jumping straight to the Gold and Bronze matches.

I wonder how many USA tv stations are showing the events?

Others have already noted, but today, in the course of about three hours online, I watched handball, swimming, air pistol, judo, fencing, weightlifting, rowing, cycling, and badminton. Could have watched volleyball and football. The swimming was Phelps but otherwise it was largely US-free. (Also commentary-free and nearly commercial-free; perfect sports television!)

The woe-is-me-for-NBC gripe was totally valid back in, say, 1996 or 2000 but those days are gone. And good riddance.

NBC online is showing Hungary vs. Montenegro water polo. Thankfully, the US deems water polo too obscure :)

What the company doesn’t seem to realize is why those people don’t want to watch the Olympics (in my case: their crappy coverage).

Eszter,

This is too broad. Lots of people, like me for example, don’t care to watch because they don’t find the events compelling.

Someone mentioned swimming. As far as I can tell there’s nothing to watch but a bunch of splashing followed by a winner being announced. I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of the swimmers, but the races themselves are just not very interesting viewing, aside from the outcome.

The coverage may not appeal to you and others, but I very much believe that NBC is not deliberately providing “crappy” coverage. They cover the Olympics the way they do because they think, no doubt based on substantial evidence, that it’s the way to attract the biggest audience.

Could they be wrong? Yes. But it will take more than a few complaints to prove it.

I don’t think I have enough time to express everything that I hate about how NBC dictates how people in the United States are allowed to see the Olympic Games. The tragedy that took the life of the father-in-law of men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon was given virtually no coverage today, despite the fact that NBC was on the air with Olympic coverage for over 12 hours. Why? Because that would take away time from the endless and repetitive stories of how dedicated the athletes are and what they have gone through to get to the Olympics. Also, no mention has been made of how oppressive the weather and how nasty the air is in Beijing. Yesterday, the men’s cycling road race was contested in temperatures that were in the mid 90’s and humidity that was well over 60 percent. Maybe I’m crazy, but if you treat the Olympics as the pinnacle of sports competition, would it not make sense to hold the games at a time and place where the weather is actually condusive to allow the athletes to achieve their best performances?? I was appalled when I learned that the U.S. athletes who dared to wear masks when they arrived in Beijing were ordered by the USOC to apologize to China. It is China and the IOC who should be apologizing to the athletes of the world for putting the Olympics in a country that has no regard for air quality or the health of its own people. The Chinese are the world’s ultimate consumers, polluting the air on a scale unparalled in world history. However, this problem could have been reduced if these games had been held in September when the heat and humidity would have been much lower. However, the recent history of the Summer Games includes multiple examples of how NBC is able to manipulate when the Olympics are held.
In 1956, the Summer Games in Melbourne, Australia began on November 22th and ended on December 8th, because that’s when summer occurs in Australia. There was also no coverage of those games from any U.S. TV network. The 2000 Games in Sydney started on September 15th and ended on October 1st, despite the fact that it was early spring in Australia and during most of those Olympics, temperatures were quite chilly. Again, this happened because NBC refused to let these games take place during sweeps month and interrupt their precious primetime TV series. The people who organized the Sydney games were outraged, but their complaints were ignored because the amount of money NBC pays allows them to dictate to the IOC when the Summer Olympics are held. In 1996, the Atlanta Olympics began on July 19th and ended on August 9th, despite the fact that this is the hottest time of the year in Atlanta, with daytime temperatures in the 90’s every day. Considering that the Seoul Olympics and Sydney Olympics were held in September and were both televised by NBC, no suggestion was ever made to hold the Atlanta games in September, when temperatures would have been at least 10 degrees cooler, which would be far more tolerable for athletes, especially the marathon runners.
My final point concerns the recent news about NBC frantically pleading with foreign websites to block access to live Olympic coverage by people in the United States. This was precipitated by reports of people who were able to use the internet to watch the Beijing Opening Ceremony live, instead of having to wait until 12 hours later when NBC showed it in primetime. We were virtually the only country that was denied the opportunity to watch the Opening Ceremony live. I for one hate the way NBC covers the Olympics, using commentators who almost never stop talking for more than three seconds. It is truly a shame that those of us who live in the United States are held hostage by NBC when it comes to our ability to watch the Olympics.

Living in a border community where I can get both the CBC (broadcast) and many of the NBC-brand networks on cable, I would have to concur that the CBC does a FAR better job of covering sport in a timely manner than NBC. Yes, NBC does toss us a few bones on the other cable networks (USA, CNBC, etc.), but their flagship coverage is highly slanted towards jingoistic rah-rah go-U.S. programming.

I watched the CBC’s version of the opening ceremonies broadcast live and NBC’s version 15 hours later. NBC managed to edit out about 45 minutes of the ceremony, making room for more advertising. Most Americans probably had no idea that big chunks were missing.

Sure wish I could watch the CBC online streams on the Internet — they’re blocked out here in the U.S. The same seems to be true for many of the other streaming Olympics sources from around the world. I’m tantalized by what’s available to everyone else but not available within our borders.

It’s NBC’s Great Firewall of the United States. What’s that they say about stones in glass houses?

I’d echo the above commenters who note that almost every country slants the coverage towards their own teams (I’m living in Asia at the moment and have seen the evidence first-hand for the past few years).

But more to the point, it seems pretty likely to me that there are large numbers of US athletes competing in the events shown *because* these events appeal to Americans – we’re more likely to have developed talent in those areas in which there’s fundamental interest in the country. In other words, NBC isn’t showing sports only because the athletes are American – they’re showing sports that Americans care about and thus are able to field teams in through the long term. (I’m sure there’s some nationalist element there, because it’s hard for many people care purely about any sport if they have no skin in the game… but it’s hardly the defining rationale.)

I, too, would like less track-and-field coverage than we tend to get. Judo and fencing are high on my list. But it seems rather presumptuous to assume that the country in which you are living should demonstrate its cosmopolitanism by showing the sports that your home country found most interesting.

Maybe it’s the elevation to primacy of raw selfishness as the default human posture.
It’s become more important that the self, or the collective self, triumph. More than anything else, including stuff like nobility, love of the game, etc.
All those antique virtues that proved to be so limiting, and frequently even debilitating.

This by way of explaining the now solidly in place US Olympic media coverage rah-rah jingoism.
The Olympics were at one time about higher things than merely winning.

I just pay an illegal piraste website to watch streaming video from Europe. Problem solved. NBC can suck my left nut!

NBC will continue with their poor coverage as long as the general audience only watches NBC and considers what they get as “top quality”, when in reality, it’s not.

CBC is far better, and not nearly as biased as NBC. They show more coverage on their main network than NBC, and show events live, and when I mean live, it’s coast-to-coast.

Does this mean that the United States—in general—contains a bunch of shallow people who could care less for the Olympic spirit, diversity in games, etc?

No. It means that the United States contains a bunch of people who like sports they grew up with and are familiar with. In this the US is no different than anyplace else, and I grow weary of hearing how we are crass, or “shallow,” because we don’t like the same sports Europeans like.

The point about swimming is not that it isn’t worthwhile, or that the athletes are not to be admired. It’s that it’s boring to watch. It looks like a bunch of splashing. I see no strategy, no critical moments, no clever maneuvers, etc. Just water and arms and heads. If I don’t care who wins it holds zero interest.

I don’t know what kind of sports you like but I’m sure that could be characterized in a similar manner as you have characterized swimming such as “a bunch of splashing.”

You are right that baseball can be similarly characterized. But I understand baseball. I love its subtleties because I’ve watched it all my life. Not true of swimming, or water polo, etc.

Don’t let the sobriquet fool you; Although not a Socialist Euro-Commie; I do abhor the American-centric coverage of the Olympics here in the good old U.S. of A., the interminable chick-flick, weepy back-stories, and hours of commercials as well.

But the whole affair went into the toilet years ago (probably after the 1968 Olympics in Mexico), when people realized there was a tremendous market there and satellites could bring the coverage to the rest of the world. Then there was the politicization of the games with those terrible events in Munich — as if the U.S.A. versus the U.S.S.R. hadn’t already done that.

Also, if Uberroth hadn’t made a financial success of the 84 games, it is most likely that the Olympics would have tailed off into oblivion because of the excessive costs to host cities.

But the biggest joke of all is watching the basketball (or baseball when it was an Olympic event one time) and seeing the same clowns you see in the NBA or American or National Leagues. Sure, the USSR fielded their own “pro” teams back in the day, but the idea of some clown pulling down 15- or 16-million bucks for the Lakers playing for a gold medal is ludicrous.

..sigh..is it August 24th yet?

“The Olympics were at one time about higher things than merely winning.”

Indeed, as the 1904 ‘Anthropology Days’ demonstrated, they used to be about displays of racial superiority. Thanks heavens we’ve moved on so far from those times, and now it doesn’t matter what colour the athletes are, as long as they wrap themselves in the right flag for the sponsors…

It appears to me that the coverage of the Olympic Games (but I could have mentioned the news coverage is well that focuses only on the US or on countries where the US is involved) seems to mirror the cultural differences of the different countries. Because these cultural differences are deeply imbedded it is difficult to change them. Therefore, when I read comments such as those of Bernard Yomtov, I have to pause and remind myself that I cannot really change his value system. He, along with many other Americans (note: not all because there are always exceptions to the rule), value different things. He does not seem to want to learn anything new and is not ashamed to state that he is not interested in learning new things. He wants his baseball, basketball, and American football and that’s it. He does not want water polo, team handball, fencing, etc. because that would require an effort to learn. In a way, this sentiment is echoed by NBC because that is precisely the audience they cater to: people who don’t want to “waste” their time with learning about the world.

Today, an Indian – Abhinav Bindra- won a gold medal in an ‘individual’ event, becoming the first Indian ever to do so.

All the TV channels in India have been covering this achievement- and only this- right through the day. Accolades have poured in for Abhinav from the high and mighty in the Govt, opposition parties, film stars,etc.

Nothing else matters today!

sniffily writing off anything you don’t understand, you could try to maybe expand your knowledge? Pick a sport, any sport – there are plenty on offer.

Oh for Pete’s sake.

Look. I don’t understand Russian. A play performed in Russian will not interest me. This does not mean I think the play is inherently bad, or that Russian-speakers who enjoy it are nuts. It means I won’t enjoy it, and if you want me to buy a ticket to a play don’t perform it in Russian.

Further, my unwillingness to learn Russian for the purpose of understanding a play is not a defect of my character.

He does not seem to want to learn anything new and is not ashamed to state that he is not interested in learning new things. He wants his baseball, basketball, and American football and that’s it. He does not want water polo, team handball, fencing, etc. because that would require an effort to learn. In a way, this sentiment is echoed by NBC because that is precisely the audience they cater to: people who don’t want to “waste” their time with learning about the world.

This is, as Walt says, ridiculous beyond belief. You have no idea whether I am interested in “learning new things.”

Am I allowed to choose the new things I am interested in learning, or must I learn what you want me to? Gee, I’d like to learn Spanish, but don’t have time because Agithehun insists I study water polo.

Sorry Yomtov but swimming (as it was your example) and most other sports are not that complicated! You swim and then you get a medal. It’s not like you have to learn the “language of swimming” to enjoy the competition and the level of skill, speed these athletes display. So I ask the question: Are you interested in learning new things? Maybe you are but that certainly is not the message you are sending out to these blog readers. And certainly, your comments and attitude sound way too similar to the ones I’ve heard from people who are not all that curious about the world during my 18 years of stay in this country. I certainly do not insist on you learning about water polo or anything else (though you may surprise yourself how much you enjoy it) I simply observed the shallowness your comments display.

but swimming (as it was your example) and most other sports are not that complicated! You swim and then you get a medal. It’s not like you have to learn the “language of swimming” to enjoy the competition and the level of skill, speed these athletes display.

Exactly. I was very clear that I wasn’t denigrating swimming, or the skills of the swimmers. It’s just that it doesn’t interest me to watch it. It looks to me like a lot of splashing followed by a winner being annonuced. On the one hand I’m criticized for not understanding the beauty and subtlety of it all, and on the other for not simply enjoying what is in fact a fairly uncomplicated contest. So which is it? And what exactly gives you or anyone else the right to draw conclusions about my character or shallowness or willingness to learn from comments I make about my level of interest in certain sports?

You seem to be reasoning as follows:

People who who are not curious about the world have little interest in sports other than those that are very popular where they live.

Therefore, people who have little interest in sports other than those that are very popular where they live are not curious about the world.

That doesn’t follow.

I have only stated my observation: those who are interested in a variety of different sports and are willing to learn something about these sports are almost always more curious people about the world. Is it 100% true? Probably not.

My anecdotal evidence is exactly the reverse. Is it 100% true? Probably not.

Look at all the above posts and you will see that we are all, pretty much in unison. The coverage is only dominated by the country you are watching from. I’m an American, but I have seen this and the last Olympic games in Turkey and Spain, respectively. I was a bit pissed not to have all the hoopla that surrounds such a grand event for my country. I have seen the badmitton, bycycling, archery, etc. only because Turkey or Spain was competing….but I want to see the real players come out to play. That means: show me USA, China, and any other country who is in contention. Otherwise, as an avid youtuber, I am not tuning in for live coverage. And to NBC: wake up and realize that your American audience is all over the world! Let’s get with the times and make online access so I don’t have to go to you tube and look later. And, by the way, I wouldn’t mind watching your advertising if that’s any condolence.

As about half a dozen of us have now commented, the type of coverage on the subsidiary channels and off-peak times is vastly different than on NBC prime time. It doesn’t appear that anyone else in the thread has noticed this. So, by all means, vent, but if instead you’d spend that time watching women’s handball or men’s epee — and you can — we’d both be a lot happier.

Righteous Babba, if your observation is exactly reverse than you have a different opinion. You are entitled to it. Excellent. That’s what makes the world go round. NBC made observations based on studies and they’ve found that most Americans want to watch a select number of sports at a particular time which will average them the greatest profit. Obviously, there are exceptions to this majority opinion but it is, nonetheless, the majority.

Walt, where is my insult exactly? The “shallow” comment? Shallow means “lacking intellectual depth, superficial” and “curiosity” means “desire for knowledge for something.” If somebody makes a statement that he/she doesn’t want to learn new things because it requires efforts (learn a different language to enjoy a particular play or learn the rules of a particular game) and because it’s not something he/she is grown up with, that statement implies to me a lack of desire for knowledge.

Isn’t it? I’m always right! I’m Hungarian :)

I was out this morning, so I set up to tape one of the subsidiary channel’s Olympic coverage, with no idea of what would be on it.

It included about an hour of team handball (Germany vs. S. Korea) and another hour of women’s volleyball (China vs. Poland). No American teams; live coverage (I think); one brief interruption to announce an American gold medal in some other sport (shooting?); i.e., none of the nationalistic/sentimental crap so many commentators are complaining about.

Why can’t people understand – it’s been said often enough here, and not just by me – that NBC coverage of the Games is not identical with American coverage, supposedly the subject of this thread???

It’s perfectly legitimate to complain about NBC coverage, which is clearly designed to be sports for people who don’t really care that much about sports. (Though whoever suggested it would be better under ABC needs some sense of cultural history – it was ABC who invented “up close and personal” coverage of the Olympics, Back In The Day.)

It’s also OK to complain that NBC is all you can access, if you can’t afford cable. There’s capitalism for you, and perhaps – or perhaps not – an argument in favor of a national television “service.”

But to claim that the US “doesn’t show” all the other sports, just because you can’t access (or can’t be bothered to access) any of the other channels that are *not* NBC, is just plain ignorant. Or the product of knee-jerk anti-Americanism. (Which is also just plain ignorant.)

For the record, I’m an all-purpose sports fan. If it moves and they keep score, I’ll watch it. I’ve seen Gary Sobers hit a century at Lord’s and Greg Chappell at the SCG. I watch the European Cup as well as the Ryder Cup and the Super Bowl and the Final Four and Wimbledon and – when I can see it – Seven Nations rugby and Australian Rules Football. None of this makes me any more virtuous than if I had become an expert on Science Fiction or tapestry-weaving. It’s just what floats my boat.

What does not impress me is self-righteousness, especially of the nationalistic variety, based on patterns of sports watching.

Of course that’s just my observation. ;}

Why do people here in the US accept NBC to broadcast the Olympics with a delay up to 2 hours, and still call it LIVE??
I have been following swimming and could read about Michael Phelps achievements in newspapers all over the country about two hours before it was sent live on NBC
well… unless someone voice their oppinion this is what we get

I believe that the only times NBC specifies that an event is “live,” it actually is, which for swimming has been at 10 PM EDT, which is 10 AM Chinese time. (They paid millions to arrange that – there’s a legitimate source for complaint, especially if you’re Australian.)

Most other stuff is taped, and is tacitly acknowledged as such. (I.e., if it doesn’t say “live,” it’s probably taped.) You can usually figure it out if you calculate time zones, which is relatively easy this time around for those of us in the Eastern USA. If they’re showing anything in the afternoon (here) it’s after midnight in Beijing, hence almost certainly taped. If you’re watching at 3AM, you may well be watching events as they happen. Primetime is a mix of “LIVE” – labelled as such – and unlabelled same-day coverage. You just need to be alert.

(I’ve mentioned before that my personal gripe is that all of the track and field – the Real Olympics – will be at night in Beijing, hence in the AM here, but not showed until about *twelve* hours later by NBC. AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH. But that’s just bloody-mindedness, and the inability of NBC to “buy” track [as they did swimming], not overt deception.)

So far I’m not aware of any outright deception on this score. If you have evidence to the contrary, I’d be interested in seeing it. And if you actually knew the result of last nights 4×100 freestyle relay (Phelps’ second gold) two hours before it happened, you could have made a fortune!!!

Web 2.0 changes the equation a bit, I think. It, of course, allows people to customize their viewing based on their preferences and their schedules. But also, blogs, youtube and wikis reach niche audiences (such as the paralympics audience) which thanks to their geographical dispersion have never before been reached so effectively. The coverage on NBC Olympics’s website is quite extensive, and the technology (Microsoft Silverlight) on there has delivered – at least for me thus far.

My apologies to CT posters, readers, and commenters (all but one) for my outburst.

Provocation aside, it was rude to the community and uncalled for.

Not only does the coverage leave out other countries, it starts in PRIME TIME with some of the most boring sports ever: Synchronized diving and then beach volleyball. I would prefer seeing the swimming, gymnastics and anything else at 8 pm – 10 pm then putting on the other stuff late night.

Thank you for saying NBC’s Olympics coverage sucks. They seem to think the only things worth broadcasting are things with water, bikinis, or women’s gymnastics. Thus the coverage of swimming, synch diving, and beach volley. Face it, I can watch Baywatch reruns and get pretty much the same visuals. Of course they show women’s gymnastics because everybody loves that once every four years.

By the way, I would LOVE to see a medal ceremony — I’d love to hear the US National Anthem and watch the flags and the athletes on the podiums, but NBC doesn’t seem to show that, either. I guess it’s more important to have the bizarre United Airlines commercial or Bob Costas prattle on about something….

It’d be nice to see some variety — different sports and different countries.