NBC Winter Olympic Coverage Sucks

I don't know a lot, but I can fake it with a TelePrompter. Is that okay ? Cool....

I am stepping onto my soap box and clearing my throat.
NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics is horrific!!

Delaying the broadcast so the west coast sees it three hours after the east coast sees it is absolutely stupid. An event that takes place less than two hundred miles away from my living room at 4 PM is shown on the east coast on a broadcast that starts at 8PM and we don’t get to see it until 8PM (at the earliest). So we have to wait so that the east coast can see it without interrupting Wheel of Fortune.

Then NBC mocks us in the ads for the Olympic coverage saying a particular event can be seen at 9PM ET. That ET just reminds us that while 9PM ET is 6PM local time here on the west coast, we’ll have to wait until 12PM ET to see it… It is said the delay is the cruelest form of torture.

When I turn on the TV to watch the Olympics I want to see the Olympics and not some talking suits. We all know these guys are reasonably knowledgeable about football, but are wide eyed and slack jawed when it comes to these “fringe” sports. When Bode Miller won his Bronze medal NBC showed us exactly six skiers taking their runs of less than two minutes each. There were seven guys before Bode and we didn’t get to see any of them. Tom Brokaw spent more time talking about what he thought about Bode than we got to actually see Bode and his competition skiing. Are we really so shallow that we need to spend all this time having football announcers explain what we are about to see? Are we so superficial that we would rather see these football announcers wearing camel hair coats sitting in front of a fire because the closest the women come to competing in bikinis is the female skaters wearing leotards?

The lead-ins the announcers give to the animated promos for the Dragon training movie are shameless and the fact that the suits don’t flinch just confirms their lot as soulless idiots.

Who bought off CBUT ? Normally we can check out the Canadian network and watch a much less bias and much broader coverage than NBC packages for US audiences. It was handy during the recent summer Olympics if you didn’t feel like seeing every game of every round of Women’s Beach Volleyball, and wanted to see more of the full spectrum of Olympic sports (including some where Americans don’t dominate). I bet that if the women cross country skiers wore bikinis NBC would be all over that. For reasons I can only imagine CBUT isn’t broadcasting the winter games and we are all the worse for it.

Did anyone else notice that the big military push in Afghanistan was timed so we would all be watching the Olympics on NBC (while wearing our powder blue Snuggies and eating fresh from the microwave Hot Pockets) and wouldn’t notice that our sons and brothers were dying in an escalating war? Talk about Wag The Dog…..

If you are really upset you can email NBC and then wait for your condescending pat on the head. “We appreciate your feedback. We do, however, choose to ignore it. In the meantime, you can watch classic episodes of Charles in Charge at nbc.com.”

The sad thing is, when I watch football and baseball I used to like listening to these guys. I know that the next season when I see them, I will have a sick feeling in my stomach and will change the channel to see what is on Fox.