NBC Olympic Coverage is Garbage
It’s tragic that the American public is fed this crap.
Who knows what time the Olympic ceremony really started. We were told here in California that it would be 7.30pm on NBC.
On local TV, Chris Reva and Mae Fesai from KCRA3 were talking from Squaw Valley at 7.30pm, which had nothing to do with the Vancouver Olympics but plenty to do perhaps with the games held there in the 1960’s.
Vancouver is on the same time zone as the west coast of America and yet the delayed live show started eventually around 9pm with Bob Costas and Matt Lauer.
All we saw was what the advertisers and the money men from NBC wanted us to see. Where were the bagpipes that our Australian friends told us were so good?
We went to the Sydney Morning Herald website to see that the Australian team had already marched into the arena, but here in California we were still waiting for the show to start.
As we watched the supposedly “live” lighting of the cauldron at midnight, we knew that everyone in Vancouver was actually asleep. I wonder how many children here, who were fired up by minute-by-minute promotions for the last several weeks, actually stayed up until midnight to see the cauldron lit in the end?
It takes all the excitement out of it, knowing that we have been forced into the advertisers’ timetable, especially as we only see what they want us to see.
When the Sydney Olympics were on in 2000, here in the US, we saw a really weak opening ceremony and we thought at the time that Australia had done a very poor job. Visiting family in 2003 we saw their taped version of the ceremony and it was absolutely fantastic! We were completely flabbergasted. It wasn’t that the show was poor, it was lousy NBC TV coverage.
The only reason we watched it on TV last night was because we were visiting friends and they had it on. Had we been at home we would have found a live feed on the Internet or probably have just gone to bed. We wanted to see it really live!
I’m not interested in the weak packaging and obviously both Bob Costas and Matt Lauer with their combined waffle have made it a horrible waste of time experience.
I’d much rather watch reruns of “Boston Legal” each evening than continue to put up with the garbage served up by NBC in primetime evening. The games run all day not from early evening until midnight.
And just remember, NBC, there are about 80 countries competing in these games not just the USA. NBC just doesn’t get it and I hope NBC goes the way of the dinosaurs – sooner, rather than later.
