I'm pretty sure most of the people who hate NBC's coverage of the Olympics are only watching the prime time broadcast. This is unfortunate, because the prime time broadcast is what NBC does the worst of all for the Olympics.
NBC is broadcasting the Olympics on eight different channels. By the end of the 16 days of the Olympics, they will have broadcast 1,000 hours of coverage on television and more than 3,500 hours live online. There is literally nothing in the Olympics you can't watch if you are determined to do so.
Clearly not everyone can take two weeks off of work to watch the Olympics. (Yeah, I have. I know. Don't start with me.) But you cannot fairly complain about NBC not covering the events you want to see. It's all there somewhere, and they do a pretty sterling job of it.
But for some reason, NBC has concluded that all we want to see in prime time is swimming, diving, gymnastics, track and field and Misty May and Kerri Walsh. To NBC, those are the "marquee events." They must have some test marketing to back this up, but to me it's a terribly narrow view of the rich diversity of sports that comprise the Olympics.
And if you don't like that and you can only watch the Olympics after work and before bed, you're out of luck because they do not broadcast any part of the Olympics on the other channels in the prime time hours because they do not want the NBC evening ratings cannibalized during those hours.
What's being broadcast outside of prime time is as good as sports programming gets. They broadcast every mile of the cycling road races, and if you're into cycling, it was thrilling. The cross-country equestrian today displayed everything beautiful about that event. Team sports, which are generally a couple hours of broadcasting and would represent a prohibitively huge chunk of an evening broadcast, are presented in their entirety in the way we are accustomed to watching team sports.
The Olympics are being presented brilliantly on NBC. Just not between 7 and 11 p.m. EST.
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