Quote:
Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
[Long post, so skip if you don't want to read an Olympic-sized rant.]
Okay, I'm sick of this shit. Every year it gets worse. The Olympics needs to form a subsidiary that handles all of the Olympic Coverage. NBC fucking sucks large, not-female-beach-volleyball ass.
1. Enough with the forced drama. We don't need to know the background of every single American competitor....The competition is what I tune in for, not the filler. Who likes that crap? How about showing more events and less life-stories.
2. We don't need the announcers constantly telling us where the American is in every single event. Once, at the beginning when you set out which countries are in the race and which lane each occupies is enough. I don't give a shit that the American is in 13th place in a 15 person race. I want to see the best in the world. Not the best American in the race.
So, recognize that this country is made up of people from all over the world who would love to see some coverage of events in which Americans might not have a shot to win. Hell, there are always some cool events I'd like to see that I normally wouldn't because that sport isn't popular here.
And when someone from another country does well, stop telling me that they train here, or that they live here.... I don't give a fuck. Neither does anyone else (with half a brain).
4. Do NOT mention Mark Spitz until someone is actually holding 4 or 5 gold medals. Fuck Phelps. He won one race out of the three he's been in. But before the first race, you were saying he had a chance to win 8 golds. Kiss my ass. Ridiculous expectations.
TM
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I agree with you on the Michael Phelps/Mark Spitz point but, as one might expect, have a different opinion on the others. Overall, I think the coverage on NBC is better than in a lot of previous Olympics. The announcers for the diving and gymnastics competitions are not nearly the "homers" of previous years. Most of the men's gymnastics scores the announcers thought were way too low for the performance were for Japanese, Chinese, Russian or Romanian athletes, not Americans.
1. I like to hear about the athletes' backgrounds, especially of competitors from other countries with whom I might not be familiar. Whether or not it is a chick thing, there must be a big percent of viewers like me who like to know. I'd rather be able to watch these stories than commercials so I wish I had TiVo.
2. I also like to know where the Americans are as long as it doesn't get in the way of paying attention to the leaders in the race. Except in the men's gymnastics team finals, where I thought they spent time on keeping track of standings for drama purposes that could have been spent showing more performances, hearing what positions the Americans are hasn't distracted me from the competition. Middle America is full of people who simply want to follow the Americans -- NBC goes with the majority.
3. If you have cable and TiVo or a VCR, you can follow lots of non-American matches and less common sports. Again, NBC is going for the most common denominator for network coverage. If I had cable, I wouldn't sleep for the next two weeks.
4. I like knowing when an athlete competing for another country trains or goes to school here but not for "taking credit" reasons. I want to see if it changes the dynamics of competition, sort of like when a pitcher from one baseball team gets traded to a competitor.
Unfortunately for TM, NBC apparently thinks most people who will be watching the Olympics are like me.
