Yes, another rant about the Olympics. Get over it.
I love the Olympics. And I understand that with a 12 hour time difference, most of the sports that I love to watch are going to have to be time delayed. The Beijing Olympic organizers were nice enough to move the marquee events for Americans (swimming finals and gymnastic team and all-around finals) to the morning so that they could be shown live to the U.S. in prime time (which, of course, is why everyone is walking around so groggy…and yes, they really did move them at the request of the American Olympic Committee and NBC). And judging from the timing of the beach vollyeball finals, they may have moved those events as well (though those may have always been morning events). But everything else is time delayed. And it stinks. Radio show hosts who don’t ever talk sports are spoiling results. MSNBC is showing highlights of events that won’t be shown for a few more hours on NBC. And even my newspaper has results before I do.
Sure, there is nothing that they can do about the time difference. But NBC could sure do a better job of how they are broadcasting the games. There is so much “filler” in each of their broadcasts (especially the prime-time show) – if you have to show me events 12 hours after they happen, then edit them down so you can show me all of the heats of a race in that same time span instead of just the ones with Americans running. And why is the time difference prohibitive in some events but not in others? There is no reason that they can’t show some of the evening events live in the morning in the US. If NBC thinks we’ll watch the Today Show hosts run through the fountains outside of the Bird’s Nest, why don’t they think we’ll watch a live broadcast of a track event or gymnastics event final? They could still show the highlights in prime time, but it would let us see it live if we want. Yes, a lot of events are streamed live online. But that assumes that the event you want to watch is being streamed (not all events are streamed) and that you’re willing to chance the fact that you will likely see the results on your way to the streamed event.
Oh yeah (since I’m hoping this will be my last Olympic rant for two years)…enough of only showing the Americans. I can’t possibly believe that the only people who performed in Wednesday night’s “gymnastics gala” were three Americans and one Chinese competitor. Even if you have to show it during the day, it would have been nice to see the whole thing.
