Much as I hate to open this Pandora's box (have to keep the tie-in to the Greek), I love NBC's expanded coverage of the Olympics. If you have cable you can get Olympics 24/7 almost. Just finished watching women's team handball. I forgot how fast-moving that game is. Thank goodness for CNBC, MSNBC, USA, and Bravo (and for the Spanish speaking - Telemundo).

My favorite NBCism last night was when one of the German gymnasts held up a flag for a teammate who couldn't make it to the Olympics that said "Fur Ronney".......and the announcer made sure we knew that meant for Ronney in German. Really!? Thanks!

And I also like how when they were covering the road race that they kept talking about the Americans.......yet none of them were close to winning a medal (or even thought to be in medal contention).

And of course they put the Australia women's relay team beating the Americans as the last thing in their coverage......not with the other swimming!


It's like they are afraid of showing Americans losing!

Why does Jim Lampley's jaw keep moving from side to side like a broken bobble-head doll? It gives me tennis neck watching him, even if he is a hunk.

[ August 15, 2004, 08:17 AM: Message edited by: sportinlife ]

Yeah, this has been great, and the NBC, CNBC, Bravo and USA coverage hasn't been overlapping each other too much. Pat125 and I leave for Ottawa and Québec City on Thursday and we get to finally see some of this great CBC coverage that we have heard about for so long. I must admit that I didn't expect to be this impressed with this amount of coverage.

Although I love the expanded coverage- I am disappointed that they still do not cover the some of the main and favorite events live- I mean- why can't they have shown the synchro diving live- or even the preliminary gymnastics and swimming heats.

YET- they will show the live basketball.

Oh well- I should be happy we can see the other events and stories on the cable stations.

As for the live coverage, it's called prime time.

They save the viewer friendly stuff for primtime.


They could have easily shown the swimming finals yesterday (Thorpe, Phelps, etc) live.......they were going on at like 2-3 PM, but it's not prime time.


I'll forgive them as long as they continue to show that Michael Phelps AT&T commercial.... wink

I taped CNBC today solely to catch the live Serbia/Montenegro vs. Hungary water polo, which they had in the listings. It wasn't shown, which was a bummer.

I'm okay with not getting some of the events live. Personally I can only watch a lot of them during prime time. Now if I can keep my friend who's in Athens at the Games from spoiling might suspense with results updates I'll be okay. Oh well, at $1.50 a minute he'll get his punishment when the phone bill comes in.

I wonder how this is going to turn out financially and ratings-wise. They're showing so many more events so they had to spend more money on extra commentators, equipment, etc. (although I imagine there's pooled camera coverage so that worldwide networks share the pictures and the costs thereof). And much of the coverage is live, but the live coverage is during odd hours when many people aren't available to watch. Are the ratings on stations like CNBC and Bravo going to increase that much over their regular programming to justify whatever advertisers are paying for commercial time?

Myself, outside of whatever's shown in prime time (and doesn't conflict with other shows I want to watch like tonight's Six Feet Under, or baseball games) I'm not going to see much of it at all.

Just caught a bit of the women's beach volleyball on NBC. Holy moley, what skimpy outfits! Straight guys must be loving this! eek!



[ August 15, 2004, 08:04 PM: Message edited by: canmark ]

I watched the tennis coverage on Bravo from about 5:00AM on, and will do so all week. The commentators, including Jim Courier, were actually quite good. I'm glad they're carrying all this ancillary coverage; we would never see live telecasts of tennis and many other sports otherwise.

I watched the tennis coverage on Bravo from about 5:00AM on, and will do so all week. The commentators, including Jim Courier, were actually quite good. I'm glad they're carrying all this ancillary coverage; we would never see live telecasts of tennis and many other sports otherwise.

I wish NBC would have a schedule on-screen at all times ("at x:xx pm, rhythmic jai alai, at y:yy pm crocodile wrestling...") so a viewer, just tuning in, could judge what's still to come. Until they move to track, I'll be doing gqick hits of viewing (and then with the mute button working overtime) but once the track-and-field competitions begin, I'll pay a lot more attention.

~Adam

In another thread, billsf posted

NBC HDTV Coverage of the Olympics

On Directv, you can tune into Channel 84 for the NBC HDTV feed. It's an odd schedule, looks like everything is a repeat of the day before that's broadcast over the air. You can get the broadcast schedule at nbc.com.

Here in San Francisco, we were unfortunate that the local NBC affiliate in San Francisco was bought out by a channel located down in San Jose. As a result, the transmitter out of San Jose cannot reach about 500,000 households in the San Francisco metro and surrounding areas. Otherwise I would be able to get the HDTV feed over the air. The FTC just approved construction of a transmitter on San Bruno Mountain to alleviate this problem, but that won't go live for another 6 months.

I'm not watching all the events, but what I find striking about the ones I have seen is the number of empty seats in the stands. Tonight (Sunday), men's and women's eight-person rowing was shown. Some of the viewing stands were completely deserted. The ones at the finish were not empty.

Women's gymnastics? Hardly any spectators.

I saw a commercial tonight for GE, the owner of NBC, so the network hasn't sold all the advertising available.

I wonder what it would be like to have a ten-foot satellite dish aimed at Telesat's various Anik satellites to see what the CBC has to offer. Are they showing more than NBC? Oh, well; I think it's encrypted anyway.

The scenes of the Parthenon make me wish I were there, but I'm sure the effect on the wallet would be similar to owning a thousand shares of Enron.

Canmark said:
"Just caught a bit of the women's beach volleyball on NBC. Holy moley, what skimpy outfits! Straight guys must be loving this!"

Yeah. Women's gymnastics too. Remind me to stay away from the middle school parking lot.

All kidding aside, the level of performance, regardless of event, is off the scale. I can't even paddle a kayak in a straight line. I'm surprised I can stay upright on inline skates. For the most part.

I do wish NBC would turn down the hagiography just a wee bit. Michael Phelps isn't the only swimmer in the world.

[ August 15, 2004, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

The radio coverage is just as bad (Westwood One, using a hodgepodge of third-rate hacks and stringers). In the car a short time ago, I heard a tape of their call of the mens' 4x100 relay, and they completely missed the Dutch team's furious fourth leg to take the silver medal away from the US.

A hate the the coverage for gymnastics.

" this is a chance to figure out who they are"
Russians- "practicing in a gymnasium falling to pieces"


AHHHHHGGGG!!!!!!!! :mad:

I do wish Bart Connors would stop saying "wow" so much.

Every time I flipped to NBC last night they were at commercial or doing an "Up Close and Personal", which I usually hate. I did enjoy the volleyball yesterday, both mens and womens, the outdoor and indoor. What athletes! The US and the Italian mens' volleyball teams didn't have much good to say to each other after the match. I am glad that NBC stayed with it to show the dispute, the adrinaline levels were pretty high.

Sooooo many commercials. Instead I watched Inside The Actors Studio with Robin Williams, and during their commercials tried to watch the Olympics, but all I got was more commercials.

Is anybody actually watching IN Greece? The tennis has been played in an almost-deserted stadium (500 people in a 9,000 seat stadium to see Venus Williams)! Last night I was floored by all the empty seats at the women's gymnastics competition. Gymnastics is one of the glamour events of the Summer Games. If they can't sell that out they're in trouble.

(((canmark)))

But I swear-to-God we were gonna create a new drinking game called "SHUT UP BOB" where everyone has to take a drink whenever Bob Costas made an inane comment at the Opening Ceremonies. Which was...often.

I did the same thing...

I have to confess I prefer watching the Canadian coverage over NBC they give a more balanced view of the Olympics.

Mike

I guess I am in the minority. I am not terribly interested in a balanced view of the coverage. I want to see the American teams first. I'll sometimes bite on the made-for-tv-drama of specific stories about athletes from other countries, but unless there is a compelling reason to not do so, I'll switch the channel if there is not an American in the final.

I'm still bitter that OLN did not have coverage of Lance crossing the finish line at the TDF.

As for the empty seats, you have to keep in mind that these are very early events, which usually don't have great attendance overall. Plus, Greece is NOT a very big country and Athens is NOT that big of a city (and it's a stuck on a peninsula....not like an Atlanta).

As for gymnastics, Bob Costas said that gymnastics is not popular at all in Greece, hince the poor attendance. They don't view it as a 'primetime' sport like we do in the U.S. for the Olympics.


I'm pissed that NBC doesn't show the stuff they have in primetime live. I mean, would it kill to show like the 200 free today live on like MSNBC or Bravo? Instead, we will all know the results of it when they replay it tonight.

Regarding the empty seats Saturday, Costas told us the Greek Orthodox view Saturday as their Sabbath & thus wouldn't go the Games (then where are the tourists??) and on Sunday, the guy from ESPN explained that day was "some sort of religious holiday" and the locals don't go to games on religious holidays. Again--where are the tourists?? And what exactly does "some sort of religious holiday" mean? Either it is a religious holiday or it isn't.

And my vote for the most over-reported story so far is the heat and how it's affecting sports reporters!! I've seen three different NBC-ers complain about the heat and read an article in the LA Times about how sportswriters covering swimming are getting sunburns or taking off their shirts to beat the heat. Jeez Louise guys--quit your whining and do your job, cover the games.

~Adam

~Adam

[ August 16, 2004, 09:39 AM: Message edited by: Adam ]

CBC coverage of the Olympics is actually very good. Not only do they have 5 hours scheduled in prime time every night, but CBC newsworld runs with it during hte day, and CBC TV starts broadcasting live at 4:30AM.

If we want to see the United States vs "who knows and who cares", we switch to NBC.

I saw more balanced coverage of the us swimmers on CBC and BBCworld.

Ratings for the first two nights of the Olympics are down when compared to the numbers from Sydney, four years ago. The opening ceremony from Athens received a national rating of 14.4 while Sydney's opening ceremonies earned a 16.2. NBC executives put a positive spin on the ratings, pointing out that because Olympic coverage is available on seven separate tv networks, this year is actually drawing more viewers than did the Sydney Games.

~Adam

Am I imagining things, or didn't they used to play "Waltzing Matilda" as the Australian national anthem. This "Advance Australia Fair," what is that?

Question: in volleyball, don't you only score a point on your serve? It seems that in beach volleyball you can score even on the opponent's serve.

Greece wins their first gold medal today, a surprise win in 3m springboard synchronized diving (thanks to missed dives by China and the US, I believe). Maybe this will boost the enthusiasm of the Greek people, and hopefully boost attendance at the events.



[ August 16, 2004, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: canmark ]

The story on TV ratings.......


And keep in mind, they are down from the Sydney Games, which were the worst rated games in 20 years.

I'm channel surfing tonight. Nearly every time I switch to NBC and the Olympics, there's a commercial on. I stopped watching the opening ceremonies because of way too many commercials. I wish I lived closer to Canada so I could catch CBC's coverage.

With the amount of coverage/attention the American Olympic team has gotten (and the high expectations), the results have been kinda disappointing so far. Although the U.S. will no doubt end up winning the most medals just because of the sheer size of the team, so far they are 3rd in the medal standings behind China and Australia. The U.S. only has 3 gold medals compared to China's TEN. Australia and China both have 6. This puts the U.S. much behind where they were after the same events in 2000.

Volleyball rules have changed since most of us learned the game in high school. The most salient changes are 1) every play ends with a point (accompanied by a shift in the winning score to 25). 2) A serve that touches the net remains LIVE. and 3) the addition of the 'Libero' player in indoor volleyball.

What is everyone's thoughts on the commentators??

Personally, I have found myself on many times just hitting the MUTE button and letting the events speak for themselves. One commentator spent 5 minutes during a tennis match comparing Roger Federer to Pete Sampras, talking about how Sampras was the greatest ever, best running forehand and on and on. I'm like, geezzzz, Sampras isn't even playing--how about talking a little bit about Federer's opponent instead! And one of the guys commentating swimming gets so excited that his voice goes up an octave and you can't tell if he's male or female. One of his quips was "...look at his height out of the water!...well, its not so much about the height." Finally, for the gymnastics commentary they tried way too hard to create drama. Every event was the best of someone's life, the greatest challenge of their life, etc. And I remember one lame comment..."you can just feel the energy in the gym". I was like, yeah, all those empty seats must create a lot of energy.

Is Bob Costas really in Greece? During prime time he's in that broadcasting center that really doesn't give much flavor of the country, he could be broadcasting from New York! I guess he has to stay in the air-conditioned broadcast center because you know what the Greek humid air would do to his hair!

I'm more worried about Costas' eyes - there's something troubling Jiminy Cricket's Doeppelgaenger and I want to know what it is! :confused:

Upon being voted the least popular "SportsCenter" anchors in a USA Today poll, Stuart Scott and Linda Cohn spoke about how pleased they were because the votes meant they made an impression and didn't just fade into the woodwork. I get tzhe sense a lot of the analysts used by NBC also think that as long as they make an impression--any impression--it's a positive.

The female expert who did synchronized diving (last name Potter) was dreadful! Not only is her voice remarkably grating, she does not enunciate properly, slurring words together and eliding over syllables in words. Worse, she would mis-identify divers ("x is in the foreground and y is in back...no, y is in the foreground & x is in back") and tell us what mistakes he saw only to then add, "but the judges aren't looking for that." I don't follow synchronized diving, but if the NBC expert doesn't care enough to properly identify the competitors or explain what the judges are looking for, why should I care about the sport?

My other major criticism about the analysts on NBC is their homerism. Notice during the gymnastics that each American was identified and given a personal, independent, individual moment, while the Japanese, the Romanians, the Russians were pretty much just another member of their respective teams. Rowdy Gaines at the pool is the same--each American is a unique entity, everyone else is just a member of some nation's team--with the notable exception of Ian Thorpe.

~Adam

Look at Bill Walton, who actually enjoys his commentary? Dick Vitale? Everyone I know can't stand him.

Got up last night at 12:30 AM CST and watched the shot put qualifying at the original stadium in Olympia. Now that's an image you'll never get at any other Olympics. It was incredible to see the fans on the embankment watching the competition. No empty stands, or should I say dirt, there. While many of the events have less than full stands, just the images from Athens are worth this Olympics. I'm sure Bejing will have full stands but they won't have the shining Parthenon every night of the competition.

Cynthia Potter's scratched my ears for years and I just don't understand why NBC keeps her on, but then I was a swimmer and we never understood divers anyway!

Al Trautwig sounds entirely too much like John Tesh, both in the voice and in the way he speaks. Lots of glittering generalities, sometimes cheezy segues, the whole bit. UGH!

I was pleased to discover that the Padres' play-by-play man, whom I know only as Scott, is calling the softball. I can't say I miss him doing the Padres' games, though, because I've temporarily abandoned them for the Olympics.

I know this is not directly on point as it's more along the lines of how NBC news is covering the games. Each night on the evening news, Brian Williams warns viewers to turn away if they don't want to see all the results which they post silently on the screen.

Last night he said, "And now, all of today's results..." and they only showed the medals won by US athletes. Not even "Women's 1500m: Mary Jones, GBR, Gold; Wanda Smith, USA, Silver; Regina daVinci, ITA, Bronze." All they showed was "Women's 1500m: Wanda Smith, USA, Silver." God forbid they should even mention that there are medals awarded in sports in which US athletes aren't even a factor, but to completely ignore the great achievements of non-US atheletes in a competition where an American has won is just galling.

And this surprises you how?

The US networks have been doing that about the Olympics my whole life. I remember when the only Olympic coverage we could get was second had from the US networks, or the next day via film.

That's the great thing about satellite. I can watch the US networks, Canadian networks, BBCworld, Chinavision, Telelatino (Portugese and Spanish feeds) and get a GREAT overall impression of the Olympics.

Lksimcoe: I guess it doesn't surprise me, but it annoys me. Each Olympic cycle I cross my fingers that the US coverage will be less jingoistic and less self-centered, but each and every time I am let down. I know I should know better.

I guess this is part of the reason why I slightly prefer the Winter Games - the US is less dominant, so they need to fill the time with more international athletes' achievements. The downside is no men in Speedos. frown

Yah, but at least the raceers and jumpers now wear skin tight suits.

You mean like Bonnie Blair? <shudder>

Self-correction time: the SDiego sportscaster currently calling the softball games on CNBC is Matt Vasgersian. He does the softball gold medal game this Monday on USA, and then moves over to MSNBC to call the baseball play-by-play next Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm curious if others will like his style as much as I do.

About only covering home athletes. Its the same in the UK and I suspect in most countries. I think in a way we are all watching entirely different Olympics. There are three sports which everybody shows - athletics, gymnastics, swimming - but beyond that each country's TV just concentrates on the events where they do well and ignores everything else.

Its better now with interactive options but on the main channel its the same as ever. If you want balanced coverage you probably have to go to Equatorial Guinea or somewhere with no medal hopefuls of their own to hype.

Still I'm enjoying these Olympics cos of the time zone if nothing else (after Sydney and Atlanta).

Following up on the rampant homerism of the coverage, though it is to be expected, it is infuriating. ON ESPNNews last night, while listing the medals the USA won, one of the anchors said "Why'd the other nations even show up at these games?" and, when the graphic displaying the medal count by country was up added "I guess we let them win some so they wouldn't feel bad."

If I had paid attention to which moron said the above, I would have sent a letter critical cof the anchor to executives at ESPN.

On a much more positive note, kudos to NBC for showing the entire 10,000 meters race live and having Marty Liquori provide solid insight as to the strategy the Ethiopians and the Kenyans would use as the race went on. I love the track events and his information enhanced the event, exactly what a commentator is supposed to do.

~Adam

I myself have particulalry enjoyed the volleyball action. Especially the U.S. Mens Team volleyball. They are one good looking hunk of a team. The game with Germany today was just awesome.

Quick shout out to the NBC coverage of the men's table tennis final between the RPC's Seung Ryu and Sweden's Jan-Ove Waldner: excellent footage and replays. Really compelling stuff.

I remember a few Olympics back, I think it was Barcelona, that NBC gave mens gymnastics about 7 minutes of coverage. I shouldn't be surprised now because of the success the teams have been having but for a while it was annoying the way they covered the Games. That seven minute coverage was in regards to the apparatus finals that evening. Since the Unified team(former Soviets of course) was dominating the competition, NBC gave it minimal coverage at best.