Tuesday, August 12, 2008

They are doing it again ...

Remember what I wrote a couple of years ago about the Olympics and Bob Costas? You probably don't but if you do, it was about the way Olympic games are broadcast in the U.S. It also mentioned that it seems more important to have some idiot (Bob Costas and the likes) in the studio talking about this and that rather than showing the actual competition. I can understand the home bias and that most Americans want to see mostly U.S. athletes but do I really need to know what Natalie Coughlin buys at a fucking farmer's market in Berkeley or San Francisco? Do I need to see Michael Phelps how he eats cereal? No, I don't. But if I want to actually see how they did I have to wait (or fast forward through my Tivo recording) until they show the actual event in the prime time broadcast on NBC. But I don't want to Tivo the Olympics because by the time I can watch it, the Olympics are on to the next event.


I understand that living on the West coast means that watching the events live would mean watching TV at very unreasonable hours, so I would expect that they show some sort of meaningful summary during prime time. But no, that would actually mean that people don't need to stay on the same channel and suffer through the same fucking commercials for 4 fucking hours. It is possible to do it differently, just look at how other nations broadcast the events. Are they biased towards their own athletes? Yeah, of course. Do they show the athletes on shopping trips? Most likely not because they use their air time to show athletes from all over the planet. I think it's hopeless for NBC to recover and Bob Costas still sucks.