Olympic Whining
I have roughly the same reactions as Kevin Drum to all the Olympic whining (about tape-delaying events)
- NBC paid an absurd amount of money for the games. Of course they are going to show the best stuff in prime time
- Lots of people have jobs where they can't watch all day. They value the tape delay
- If you want to watch it, it's all streaming over the Internet. Every damn match. I have had fun sampling stuff I am not exposed to much, from team handball to skeet shooting to archery to cross country equestrian. The kayaking was a favorite of mine, in particular (though the purpose built kayaking stadium seems a government boondoggle of epic proportions). And all of it (with the exception of the sailing, can't figure out what the hell is going on) works great without commentaries, frequent commercials, or relentless human interest stories.
I have heard tell that NBC put spoilers in their evening news coverage. This seems to be a mistake -- if you are going to tape delay, then as a network you need to be consistent with this policy. But since I don't watch the network evening news, I am safe.
Best broadcast TV moment of the games: The first commercial after Phelps lost the 200m butterfly by hundreths of a second in an uncharacteristic finishing mistake, we get the Morgan Freeman-narrated commercial about Michael Phelps winning by a hundreth of a second last Olympics and wondering how great it would be if it happened again. Priceless.
