NBC Olympics Rant

NBC's Winter Olympics coverage has been an epic failure, even moreso than their Summer 2008 coverage. I've been consistently frustrated with it during the games thus far, but yesterday's horrendously terrible excuse for a broadcast really put the icing on the cake.

So yesterday, I was watching throughout the day, and was entertained by the biathlon. Good stuff. Then, they show us the Russia vs Czech Republic hockey game. All right, whatever. It was a good hockey game. But at the same time, Bode Miller was winning a gold medal in the super combined. Yet, for some strange reason, I am not seeing this event on live TV. Why? Why?! Alpine skiing events are very exciting, and when you have an American competing in such an event with a legitimate shot at the gold medal, I should be seeing it LIVE! But no, instead I get to see a hockey game that I really don't care about.

Then, their evening news broadcast comes on, and I hear: "we're going to tell you how Bode Miller did during today's super combined event. Spoiler alert!" So I immediately ran to the TV and turned it off. You'd think that they would WANT people watching their television programming, but no. They refuse to show the live event, and then go ahead and tell you the results before they actually air the event. And it's not like I could have gone online to a streaming broadcast. More on this soon.

Fast forward to the evening, prime time broadcast. You know, that time when they're supposed to give us their best programming because everyone is supposed to be watching. Instead of giving us live events, they're showing the taped runs from the alpine skiing. And not even in their entirety; they only want to show you the Americans, the medalists, and a couple of other random people they decided to do stories about. Like watching the skiing? Too bad. You only get a few skiers. Then we go out to the bobsled event, but in the middle of the first run, Bob Costas breaks in and urgently informs us that they're taking us quickly to the end of the US-Canada hockey game. Wait, what was that? You mean the US-Canada hockey game is going on live AND WE ONLY GET TO SEE THE FINAL 30 SECONDS?!!!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING????!!! Of course, they have Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth telling us how hugely important this game was, what a rivalry it is, and how electric the atmosphere was. AND IT WASN'T ON NBC?! No, it was on MSNBC, which those unfortunate enough not to have cable or satellite service can't even watch. I have MSNBC, but NBC wasn't kind enough to even inform me that the game was on MSNBC, so that didn't do me any good, now did it? In principle, I could have streamed it live on the computer. In practice, though, I could not.

Now, it would be great if the evening show was mostly a highlights program with some live events and feature pieces sprinkled in, but only if I could go online and stream events live! But no, they don't want to do that. They'll let you stream curling and hockey only. What? Why? Why not stream everything, or at least several different events a day? They say they think streaming will cannibalize TV viewers. Right. Because not letting me watch what I want to watch really makes me want to tune in to the broadcasts. But I guess they can do that if they want, since there is no competition! If I want to watch the Olympics, I have to go to NBC. Because of that artificial monopoly, they don't have to suffer for their refusal to let me watch what I want.

To top it off, they started the broadcast tonight with a completely pointless and irrelevant intro of Bob Costas flying into the Broadcast Center on a waterplane. Why are they wasting my time by showing his arrival? Since I'm forced to watch their miserable broadcast to get Olympics coverage kind of live, I want to see the games! Not Bob Costas talking to Al Michaels from an airplane, not stories about various athletes. The games! Ugh.

If there were some real competition, then maybe I could actually vote with my eyeballs. If CBS, FOX, and ABC were all broadcasting the Olympics, I could drop NBC in favor of better coverage (assuming any one of them would do better, which is questionable at best). Or at least they would all be trying to outdo one another, and likely one of them would do the radical thing and SHOW LIVE EVENTS!

Ah, it feels much better now that I've got that off my chest. Well, at least until I look at the TV and see yet another story about some athletes instead of live Olympics action. Like right now. Grrrr.