Is it just me or does the Olympics coverage suck?
 

Not the sports themselves, but it seems like they are barely putting them on. I would think that having paid a bunch for them, you would want to have a lot of coverage. As I sit at home from 6-8, I think about the random stuff they could be showing (like curling, etc.) that I would much rather be watching than some animal planet show, or anything else. It seems to me like showing anything from the Olympics would draw a bigger audience than the other crap they show. Anyone think differently?

Two years ago with the summer games NBC had a HD channel that showed 24/7 coverage, which was nice, surprised they did not do the same this time around.

I was thinking the same thing. What is really annoying is they are not showing the more popular events live on USA or MSNBC. I really wanted to watch the combined alpine event but it was long spoiled by the time it aired on NBC.

All the HD coverage this year is horribly compressed and fast motion looks worse than SD.

I don't know what's going on, but it sure seems like the biggest event NBC handles should be presented better than this. :(

I agree. I'm seeing compression issues too, and the coverage overall has been very lackluster. One bright spot, however, has been the curling coverage over on CNBC. They know no one is watching, and so they don't take any of it seriously. It's like watching <i>World News Now</i> at 3am. There is all kinds of oddball humor and sarcasm, not what you expect from the stuffy NBC Olympics. I love how they give away that curling rock-shaped bread to all their guests.

das

Comcast added UHD specifically for the Olympics (and will taketh it away when they're over) so I figured it would have round the clock coverage. Instead it's like 20 hours of Knight Rider and the Equalizer with a little ice skating in the afternoon. Weird.

In a somewhat related story, the women curlers all seem pretty hot......

They are, you really have to wait until they cool down before handling them.

http://img.alibaba.com/photo/5028582...air_Curler.jpg




Oh wait....you meant....never mind.

If you can get it, watch the CBC coverage. As usual, vastly superior coverage to the American networks.

UHD is gone after the Olympics!?! I thought it was just moving to the HD channel pay group (along with inHD, HDNet, etc) after a free February for the Olympics.

I guess that's possible but it's not staying as it is. I heard that it's going bye bye but that's just the word on the street. Pass it on.

No, Dave. I would say that the Olympics suck equally as much as you do...

:sad:

Every year people dog the Olympic coverage. I like seeing what the USA is doing, so the coverage is good for me.

I like seeing what they are doing as well, but I wouldn't mind watching sports in which we suck as well. I'd sure rather watch that than the other stuff on at that time on NBC. The actual coverage of what they show has been fine, but they don't show much.

Comcast in my area, for the last two or three Olympics, used to give us MSNBC for the duration of the games and then take it away again. I thought it was pretty cool that they let us see all the coverage.

I completely agree that they should be showing more, and they should be using some of their cable channels to let us see stuff live. I think it's a travesty that we have to watch almost everything canned. During the Athens games I was able to find a couple of live internet streams, and even though they weren't in english it was so much fun to watch events unfold in real time. Sadly, I haven't found any such streams for these games.

That said, I do think the canned coverage has improved for the last few games, although I was it weren't so broken up and condensed. They now do a good job highlighting both American athletes, even when they aren't contenders, and athletes from other countries. I think the games should feel international, after all, but we still want to know how our hometown boys and girls are doing.

Yeah, I can't figure out why they don't put some more coverage on NBC during the day. Three hours of the today show followed by five hours of soaps, or Olympic coverage? Hmmm...

However, if you are a hockey fan, the live coverage on UHD and MSNBC is great - 12 or 13 combined hours per day for the next week or so. Only problem is it starts at 4am each day. Quite amazing, actually, that they must be showing as much hockey as Canada is.

Yeah, that sounds awesome - I wish I could get cable/sat. for two weeks only. I'm a hockey fan every four years. :)

lol... I was going to say the same thing. I'm kinda confused at how little coverage is actually on UHD.

(And, yes, I'm seeing compression issues as well. I'm consistently amazed at how far we still have to go in terms of high definition. Why any "average joe" would bother upgrading to HD is beyond me.)

wow.... i completely forgot the olympics were on

Like past Olympics, I think the cable coverage is excellent. The prime-time packaged coverage sucks. At the least, they could stick with one event and show it all at once. However, NBC won't do this because they want fans of each sport to stick around through the sports they don't care for.

agreed. Instead of just watching the snowboarding and then going and doing something else, they force me to sit their all night!

As far as compressing goes, how can you tell? I just bought an HD STB and antenna just for the Olympics (I used to have HD thru Charter before I moved to the dorms across the country :( ) and well, at times, I do see some screen door action. Is that what shows how compressed it is?

the NBC coverage usually blows
I watch CBC and have for every olympics since I moved to Buffalo

I totally agree. Though even in the primetime NBC shows, they've been packing in about as much competition as they can and minimizing the number of dippy "up close and personal" profiles that they used to do.

Look at how much they're covering for today according to my dvr schedule(Thursday 2/16). Times are Central.

4:00am-3:30pm(!) MSNBC - Men's hockey: Finland vs. Italy; Czech Republic vs. Switzerland, Russia vs. Sweden
5:00-10:00am USA - Women's biathlon: 7.5km sprint gold; Men's snowboarding; Men's curling: Sweden vs. USA
2:00-5:00pm USA - Men's hockey: Kazakhstan vs. USA
4:00-5:00pm NBC - Women's cross country skiing 10km; Speed skating: men's and women's team pursuit semifinals
4:00-7:00pm CNBC - Women's curling: Sweden vs. USA
7:00-11:00pm NBC - Men's Figure skating; Men's snowboarding; Speed skating: team pursuit finals; Skeleton
12:20-1:00am NBC - coverage includes figure skating and medals ceremonies

That's over 28 hours! And there is an hour post-show after the hockey on MSNBC, and an hour of the daily figure skating show "Olympic Ice" on USA, and the "Olympic Ozone" fluff-piece show on local NBC stations the half hour before primetime coverage starts.

You think the Olympics coverage sucks?

Try getting any information on Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.

Seeing a city try to get back on its feet amid destruction of that scale and put on a happy face for the world would seem a helluva lot more dramatic than watching the same ol' figure skaters do the same ol' routines (to the same ol' Android Lloyd Webber showtunes) they've done again and again and again.

Focus will shift to Mardi Gras day coverage in a couple of weeks.

As for the winter Olympics, dull overall. Not just in coverage.

True.

I find their coverage lacking this year. In fact, I think it has been slipping every Olympics following their excellent coverage of the Sydney games.

Apparently, they got really good ratings for the Hockey on CBC in 2002 so now they have each Canadian Men's Hockey game on 3 times a day. Hockey's okay and everything, and I understand it is a Canadian network, but I'd rather see sports that I can't see everyday. It is especially disappointing when I stay up way too late to try to catch the morning events and get the previous day's Hockey crap.

Hey, those Knight Riders are great! It's that or Sci Fi for me, and I just can't watch SD signals. Well, except Queer Eye. :lol:

Ratings are taking a bit of a hit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/sp...rtner=homepage

Several ESPN radio and TV hosts have openly wondered if the issue of tape delaying the important events has caused serious downfalls in ratings. This is especially true in the Internet age, where anyone with Internet access can get results long before NBC shows them on TV. :down:

Sad to say, I think if Disney had the rights to the Olympics they could have used not only ABC, but ESPN, ESPN2 and possibly the ABC Family Channel to show events live regardless of time of day. ABC could then show their prime-time package as a "compilation" of events of the day--maybe three hours a night. Besides, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 could use it to showcase HD broadcasts live, too. :up:

Tape-delaying is not the reason. Tape-delaying coverage has been going for decades. I think ratings are down for 2 reasons: the other networks have finally decided to go on the offensive and schedule their strong shows against the Olympics instead of conceding defeat. Second, I think this new figure skating (the event where women tune in in droves) scoring system is a turn-off for many viewers.

I said before - you'll never see live coverage of the big events during the day because the network (no matter who has the rights) will not want to dilute their prime-time menu.

You know what I hate? All the new weirdo combo sports. I watched the moguls one where they have to do two jumps. How stupid is that. You get a score for your jump which is based on subjectiveness, and a score for your time. That seems stupid. Why not have them make an oragami swan at the bottom of the race, judge it, and combine that score as well?

If NBC would tell me the exact time and length of when an event is running, I would watch it, if I knew Alpine racing was from 9pm - 10pm and all racing and medals would be won during that time, I would watch or at least DVR it, but they stretch it out over 5 hours, who's got that kinda time to burn on trying to find some sports interest in this mess of a production.

I call it the made-for-DVR Olympics.

Yep. I just TiVo it all and then watch what I want. My viewing habits are all screwed up right now. Because of the seeming mandate from Disney to spoil the Olympics on every show they own, I'm having to watch <i>PTI</i> at 1am, which really sucks.

das

To follow up on the figure skating - maybe it's just me but I think NBC is chopping up the event coverage more than they ever have before. Wasn't the Men's Free Skate shown in at least 4 different blocks last night? Not to mention, it didn't end until after 11 pm. This is bound to turn off viewers.

I have to agree that the coverage shown on NBC, especially on primetime, is horrible.

But, I loved staring at the female component to the US team in Ice Dancing (via HDTV), Tanith Belbin is purty.

No coverage on the network this morning - just their regular old Saturday morning crap.

-ohbfrank-

Then how come I'm seeing coverage on CNBC and USA Network?? :confused:

Yeah - there is no excuse for that - they could always throw some lesser event up and show it live.

That being said - the Swiss are currently up on the Canadians 1-0 going to the 2nd period on U-HD and you have Curling on USA.