response 1 of 41:

Sep 24 21:20 UTC 2000

NBC makes me sick.  I've been watching CBC.

response 3 of 41:

Sep 24 23:53 UTC 2000

Is there a schedule online the CBC and NBC coverage? Most of the events I have
no real interest in, and sitting through endless rounds of gymnastics coverage
to see part of a softball or basketball game isn't my idea of fun. 

response 5 of 41:

Sep 25 03:17 UTC 2000

Look at http://cbc.ca/olympics and then click on "schedule".
That's for the Canadians, of course.  I haven't actually tried to 
use their information.  It doesn't identify any start times, just
tells you what's on in a given block of programming.
 

response 7 of 41:

Sep 25 04:41 UTC 2000

If they thought about the quality of their product, they wouldn't have lost
the ratings game.

response 9 of 41:

Sep 25 15:33 UTC 2000

I don't have cable or any TV for that matter, but I watched some of the
Olympics, because I wanted to see the swimming.  God, do they know HOW DUMB
all those "Olympic Moments" are?  Or the little back stories?  I'm sorry, Gary
Hall, Jr. that you have diabeties, but it wasn't the end of your career, your
life, and <gasp> you have to check your blood before you swim?  <faint> 
Sorry, but I have little sympathy for those who prepetuate stereotypes for
publicity.  And the 10 minute history about the "founder" of the trampoline
story?  Mildly interesting, but come on.  I wanted to see them compete. 
That's it, just a few events.  I didn't like the coverage in 96, and it
amazingly got WORSE in 2000.

(am I evil if I think it'd make the triathalon more interesting if they were
truly being chased by sharks?)

response 11 of 41:

Sep 25 17:06 UTC 2000

I'm just pissed because I missed all the fencing yet again.  Of course, I did
this by flipping to the other channel for approximately ten seconds, then
returning just in time to see the French guy celebrating.  Great coverage.
Fortunately, it's at least predictable.  If I turn on the TV and see women's
gymnastics, I can turn it right back off with complete confidence that there
will be exactly zero interesting coverage that evening, instead of the usual
five percent.  
  Is there anyone on earth who actually *likes* the kind of coverage they
routinely give the Olymp*cs?

response 13 of 41:

Sep 25 20:48 UTC 2000

  I can't stand American networks' Olympic coverage any more..  CBC is quite
  a bit better and even it's pretty fluff-filled..

  What's most baffling is that I've never met anyone who admits to
  preferring the current mix of Olympic event coverage and human
  interest pieces.  Also, it seems like the network(s) doing Olympic
  coverage for the last games have been complaining about much lower than
  expected ratings.  I'm not a television programming expert, and I have
  to believe that the networks have probably put some serious thought
  and work into trying to maximize their ratings, but somewhere in this
  picture there's a really serious disconnect between what people *say*
  they want and what the network gives them.

  Here're my thoughts about Olympic coverage:

  1)  I don't care a whit whether the athletes who medal are Americans
      or not, and I actually feel sort of creeped out when the coverage
      is selectively edited to only show American competitors winning --
      it doesn't make me feel better about America to see Americans winning
      (almost) every event shown, instead it makes me feel vaguely soiled
      by propaganda.

  2)  Although gymnastics is interesting, if we're only going to see a
      limited amount of actual competition, I want to see a much wider
      array of events.  And I don't care how many medals "we" win, after
      I've seen six or seven swim events they all start to look the same
      to me.  And even if I really loved sports like baseball, soccer, 
      basketball, etc, I'd gladly give up an hour or two of time devoted
      to the "big" sports to see some of the "little" ones..  I want to
      see the best players in the world competing in archery, table-tennis,
      sailing, equestrian events, heptathlon, and all sorts of other events
      that you can't see on television every other week of the year.

  3)  The human interest pieces on the athletes are a convenient way for 
      the networks to fill time, but they've gotten ridiculously out of hand.
      On one of Friday's (I think) NPR broadcasts they did a piece where they
      edited together a string of particularly mawkish sound bites about
      athletes overcoming diversity to arrive at personal triumph and the
      effect of hearing them all strung together was hilarious.

  4)  The Olympic Games are a collection of competitions between individual
      athletes or national teams (for the team events) but they are not,
      themselves, some sort of meta-competition.  Cut the crap about "the
      medal race".  I'd hoped we could get beyond that sort of nonsense once
      the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and USSR died, but I guess old
      habits die hard..
  
  I hope that when the time comes to license broadcasting rights for future
  Olympic games, the IOC considers licensing netcasting rights to someone who
  will make video (no matter how poor) available for every event..

  This year's games seem to have set a bad precedent, though, with a lot
  of effort spent on stomping out unauthorized netcasts to preserve the 
  commercial monopoly on Olympic coverage for traditional broadcasting
  networks worldwide.

response 15 of 41:

Sep 25 23:48 UTC 2000

Supposedly the little "human interest" profiles on various atheletes was a
new idea a few years back, and generated a lot of ratings.  

TV programmers, knowing a formaula when they see it, cranked the percentage
up every subsequent Olympics.

It works, sort of.  On the other hand, Regis's game show will be on 4 or 5
nights a week this fall.  Will it continue to get great ratings?  Probably
not, once people burn out on it.

response 17 of 41:

Sep 26 03:56 UTC 2000

The only interest I have in the olympics (I have not seen even one second of
them this year, and I suspect I won't) is in women's fencing, as Ann Marsh
was one of my high school fencing teammates.

The other day while waiting in line at the grocery store, I glanced through
a magazine about the olympics which had little more than a blurb about each
sport surrounded by ad content, and was pleased to see Ann as the focus of
the graphics on the fencing page, though the blurb barely mentioned her.

response 19 of 41:

Sep 26 18:37 UTC 2000

the woman's softball team won the gold.  i'm done.  

response 21 of 41:

Sep 26 22:16 UTC 2000

Supposedly that's how the Australians pronounce it, which would make it the
correct pronounciation.

response 23 of 41:

Sep 27 03:44 UTC 2000

re 21 - Which would make sense if they were broadcasting to Australia, 
but they're broadcasting to the USA, where the correct pronunciation is 
"aw-sees".  Being cool and colloquial is fine if one is doing a "light" 
piece and talking about shrimps on the barbie and Crocodile Dundee and 
whatnot, but not during a "serious" report.