At first I wasn’t at all into the Olympics but then I caught Olympic fever and I became interested in alpine skiing and snowboarding events. That’s when I noticed that the NBC coverage of the Olympics really sucks.
For instance, today I was looking forward to the men’s parallel giant slalom event. NBC starts by showing the qualifying rounds, that’s great, almost complete coverage. But then they didn’t show any of the 1/8 finals, or quarter finals. The runs where US competitors lost or were disqualified were just mentioned in passing. This so they can show hours and hours of cross country skiing.
Last night they didn’t even show the gold medal race for the women’s parallel giant slalom? Huh?
Their fact reporting is bad too. After each run I want to see the standings and I want to be able to see at a glance what’s been done and what’s yet to come. But no, if you aren’t paying very close attention you will have no idea what’s going on and they won’t tell you twice.
They jump all over the place showing 2 minutes of one event, then 2 minutes of another, then 10 minutes of Bob Costas being a total dork. It’s truly ridiculous. I don’t see how they could be doing a worse job.
Furthermore, Bob Costas has had the worst plastic surgery I can imagine and he and the other football sportscasters are honestly horrible at hosting the Olympics. Wherever he is, it’s a giant room with a only desk in the middle and him sitting at it. Sometimes there’s a lone chair. It’s bizarre and feels like the twilight zone.
The Olympics need to be broadcast online so you can watch entire events and watch them at your convenience. I’m on the west coast and I have to wait for events when I could be watching them live or nearly live. NBC messed up the online experience in two ways. First, they don’t provide the opportunity to watch events live and in full. Second, even if they did, they require Microsoft’s stupid Silverlight plugin to watch video. NBC, I don’t want to have to install Microsoft Crapware on my machine to watch the Olympics.
My vote for the next “host” of the Olympics is YouTube.