NBC coverage of Olympics was lousy

  • Thread starter Thread starter empther
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
E

empther

Guest
Last night was the last straw.
They promised the anxiously awaited figure skaters’ post-competition exhibition show but what they did with it was a mess. It was advertised as being scheduled at eight o’clock. What do we get? From eight to eight thirty we have to watch this infinitely boring segment about a girl who was born without feet in Russia, was given up to an orphanage and adopted by Americans and raised over here. Now at 21, she returns to Russian to find her family. And she does. But by the time she does you’re screaming, “Let’s have the skaters already why don’t ya!”

Then after a little bob sledding or something we see Gracie Gold in a very good opening act.
Then we get ten minutes of commercial ( yeah, well, nobody is going to change the channel now, hunh? 😃 )
Then we get the Russian girl’s typically somber Russian performance with the huge yellow flags.
Then we get forty minutes of bob sledding or something.
Then we get the American ice dance team.
Then we get another hour of bob sledding or something.
So far we’ve seen nine minutes of the skating exhibition and it’s hard to believe the thousands of spectators had assembled for that.
I gave up and went to bed at eleven. My sister said they showed another skater, then switched to bob sledding or something. :bigyikes: :banghead: :takethat:

I could imagine millions of mothers with houses full of kids waiting forever for the exhibition and having to suffer through bob sledding or something.

Incompetent boobs at NBC ! There are stupid people in this world. :mad:
 
My husband and I got annoyed with the primetime coverage pretty quickly, too. Not to mention Bob Costa’s little tirade about the Russian government and Vladimir Putin on Friday night. I don’t remember anything like that when the Olympics were in Beijing - seemed like the coverage slobbered over “how far China had come.” (I’d love to be corrected on that, though, if there is something.)

We are lucky enough (well, maybe unlucky, because it costs an arm and a leg) to have DVR so we recorded the daytime coverage on NBCSN and the other cable networks. Commentary was better, and we got to see all the athletes, plus fastforward through commercials. 😉
 
And furthermore…!!! :bigyikes:

NBC said that before the closing ceremony tonight,
they will show a program about the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Believe it or not! :banghead: :takethat:

Now, friends, I was interested in the Tonya/Nancy thing at the time, and it gave me a kernel of an idea which through a long evolution eventually ended up as my book,
but I don’t want to see that stuff again, and I don’t think anybody else wants to either.

Why doesn’t NBC show us an hour of the skaters’ exhibition show? 😃

Oh, yeah. That would require intelligence which doesn’t exist at NBC. 😦

Next time, give the Olympics to ABC Sports. 👍
 
Costas is a liberal doing his master’s bidding. Nothing more, nothing less. liberal politics are the reason sports are becoming a turn off to me. ESPN is just as bad. I will still watch games, just mute the talking heads.
 
empther said:
And furthermore…!!! :bigyikes:

NBC said that before the closing ceremony tonight,
they will show a program about the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal at the 1994 Winter Olympics. Believe it or not! :banghead: :takethat:

Now, friends, I was interested in the Tonya/Nancy thing at the time, and it gave me a kernel of an idea which through a long evolution eventually ended up as my book,
but I don’t want to see that stuff again, and I don’t think anybody else wants to either.

Why doesn’t NBC show us an hour of the skaters’ exhibition show? 😃

Oh, yeah. That would require intelligence which doesn’t exist at NBC. 😦

Next time, give the Olympics to ABC Sports. 👍
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, I believe NBC has a contractual lock on the Olympics.

We’ll see the peacock again from Rio.

ICXC NIKA
 
This entire Olympics (with the possible exception of women’s hockey) was kind of “meh” for me. If there was something I wanted to watch, I turned on the NBC sports network on DirectTV, which showed things live. Much better.
 
Unfortunately, I believe NBC has a contractual lock on the Olympics.
Click to expand...
We’ll see the peacock again from Rio.
Click to expand...
After the IOC sees the people’s ho-hum response to NBC’s coverage,
I hope they reconsider.
It all comes down to money, you know. You can’t get people excited about a sport like bobsledding which not one person in 40,000 has tried.
The IOC is dead unless they can get people excited about the Games.

ABC Sports pioneered Olympic coverage fifty years ago and got it right. I noticed a change when NBC took over. They used TODAY Show “reporters” ( :rotfl: ) who didn’t know or care about sports. ABC had a regular sports staff. Give ABC another chance.
 
So many negative, whiny threads in popular media. It gets old. 😦
 
Yeah - we watched one night of it for a couple hours and it seemed like it was just commercials w/a few sports thrown in to justify calling it the Olympics.

We really weren’t impressed with the “coverage” and watching “news personalities”.
 
Yes - I agree that it gets old. Usually, I don’t comment in this section because it’s always the same narrative.

However, the Olympics coverage was just awful this year. People can usually count on the Olympics to be decent and to see the things that they want to see w/o too big of a hassle.
 
empther said:
Last night was the last straw.
They promised the anxiously awaited figure skaters’ post-competition exhibition show but what they did with it was a mess. It was advertised as being scheduled at eight o’clock. What do we get? From eight to eight thirty we have to watch this infinitely boring segment about a girl who was born without feet in Russia, was given up to an orphanage and adopted by Americans and raised over here. Now at 21, she returns to Russian to find her family. And she does. But by the time she does you’re screaming, “Let’s have the skaters already why don’t ya!”

Then after a little bob sledding or something we see Gracie Gold in a very good opening act.
Then we get ten minutes of commercial ( yeah, well, nobody is going to change the channel now, hunh? 😃 )
Then we get the Russian girl’s typically somber Russian performance with the huge yellow flags.
Then we get forty minutes of bob sledding or something.
Then we get the American ice dance team.
Then we get another hour of bob sledding or something.
So far we’ve seen nine minutes of the skating exhibition and it’s hard to believe the thousands of spectators had assembled for that.
I gave up and went to bed at eleven. My sister said they showed another skater, then switched to bob sledding or something. :bigyikes: :banghead: :takethat:

I could imagine millions of mothers with houses full of kids waiting forever for the exhibition and having to suffer through bob sledding or something.

Incompetent boobs at NBC ! There are stupid people in this world. :mad:
Click to expand...
Different opinions for different people - but the same outcome 😉

My husband and I personally were turned completely off the coverage specifically because of all the attention given to figure skating instead of bob sledding, skiing, hockey and curling. And no - we don’t have cable, so couldn’t go to whatever “other” channel they decided to air those one. Wish they’d have moved all figure skating to the “other” coverage and put all the bob sledding, skiing, speed skating, and, yes, curling on the prime time show 🙂
 
CradleJourney said:
Different opinions for different people - but the same outcome 😉

My husband and I personally were turned completely off the coverage specifically because of all the attention given to figure skating instead of bob sledding, skiing, hockey and curling. And no - we don’t have cable, so couldn’t go to whatever “other” channel they decided to air those one. Wish they’d have moved all figure skating to the “other” coverage and put all the bob sledding, skiing, speed skating, and, yes, curling on the prime time show 🙂
Click to expand...
Yeah, different strokes for different folks.

And when the different folks are a third of a BILLION viewers, nobody’s going to be thoroughly happy with the outcome.

I’ve never been on a bobsled; there probably isn’t one in my state. But that is one of the few WOG events that I give a hoot about. YMMV.

In the end, all that matters is the US$ that goes to the advertisers, and through them, to the IOC. Yes, the commercials are finally what the thing is about.

C’est la vie.

ICXC NIKA
 
:hmmm:
So many negative, whiny threads in popular media. It gets old. 😦
Click to expand...
It’s so easy to criticize. Anybody can criticize anything or anybody.

Do you have anything substantial to contribute? :confused:
Something interesting that people will find worth thinking about a few nanoseconds? :hmmm: :hmmm:

🍿
 
The good news is that NBC (or at least Comcast) knows that NBC Sports is currently the worst sports network behind ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports.

Hopefully Comcast SportsNet can fix NBC Sports
 
It’s always lousy, but I’ve gotten used to it. The primetime coverage is pretty much just a summary. I especially hate how they split up the coverage of heats/semifinals/finals. Even if you only want to see one sport, you have to watch a lot longer. Lots of shows do this these days to force people to watch the whole program. For example, Mythbusters stretches out each “myth”. If you want to see the conclusion of one segment you have to watch most of the show. I hate this practice.

One good thing is that all the sports are online now. I know not everyone can take advantage of this, but my family and I are lucky to have high speed internet. The events that weren’t shown or add odd times, I just watched on the website. Here is the link to the Gala Exhibition video: stream.nbcolympics.com/figure-skating/winter/14833/ If you have Comcast, you can watch it automatically. Other people who get NBC have to login with their Cable/Satellite account first.
 
phil19034 said:
The good news is that NBC (or at least Comcast) knows that NBC Sports is currently the worst sports network behind ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports.

Hopefully Comcast SportsNet can fix NBC Sports
Click to expand...
Really? Or are you saying NBCSN is third worst after ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports? 😉

I get bored with ESPN and all of the “analysis.” Give me people actually doing something! If it’s international competition, even better! (What can I say? I like flags. :p)
 
I get bored with ESPN and all of the “analysis.”
Click to expand...
ABC’s Jim McKay,
remember him ? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McKay
knew how to do it right.

He did something in the 1976 Winter Olympics that I’ll never forget.
He made a slow motion film of the beautiful 17 year old Dorothy Hamill practicing her long program for the upcoming ladies figure skating competition and showed it to her father.
Jim McKay later showed it on television and he was emotional as he said, “I don’t think Mr. Hamill will mind if I tell you there were tears in his eyes when he saw the film ]”.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top