Teams
Forum List
Toggle sidebar

NBC's coverage of the Olympics

cyclonenum1

cyclonenum1

Well-Known Member
Nov 30, 2006
7,191
330
83
I read an interesting opinion piece written by a guy from The Dallas Morning News. He opined that NBC gave sports they have an ongoing business relationship with (like beach volleyball) more prime time exposure on the big network than they did to sports they do not have any ongoing business relationship with (like men's basketball). I really didn't think of it as I was watching the games but after reading the article and reflecting upon it...I think this guy is correct. I don't begrudge NBC for doing this because this is a business and they are making business decisions. I just found it interesting...and it was certainly not something I had thought of.
 
Anyone else notice they brought back the old "NBA on NBC" jingle anytime the mens' basketball team performed?
 
I don't care if they give more coverage to sports they regularly air, as long as there are athletes/teams from the USA playing in them. I channel flipped regularly during this Olympics because NBC seemed to give a lot of time to events where no one from the US was competing! Lots of coverage of Chinese divers, there was the China vs Mongolia flyweight boxing match, etc.

I don't care about non US athletes. Sorry.
 
I thought the coverage was awful. That's interesting about the volleyball. I even commented to my wife that other than swimming, gymnastics, and track (the big 3) all they show is sand volleyball which isn't particularly compelling in my opinion. The track and field coverage was really lacking in the field events. I enjoy watching the long jump, pole vault, and high jump. And the worst was the ignoring of the U.S. gold medal winner in the decathalon. Thats one of the most exciting events due to the wide of variety of skills necessary, and the fact that the winner is the unofficial "Greatest Athlete in the World".
In addition to this most of the announcers weren't even in Beijing. They were in a studio here in the U.S. watching the events on TV. And if I had to watch one more inane segment from Mary Carillo where she tries to crack stupid jokes to confused Chinese people she's interviewing I was going to shoot myself.
 
I agree with the column for the most part. It seemed odd that the men's bball games were shown at like 7 AM on USA, and were completely absent from NBC, even the finals. It seemed like early on in the games we got a lot of video highlights on NBC, but by the end a brief mention of the results was it.

I enjoyed watching the bball team play as much as anything else in the tourney, and I think at least a couple of the games could have been deserving of a prime time slot on NBC. You could have spliced one in with the continuous coverage of the marathon. Seriously, there is no need to cover more than the last 10 minutes of that. Watching 100 people run 26 miles is actually less exciting than watching 90 minutes of soccer end 0-0.
 
CloneFan65 said:
I thought the coverage was awful. That's interesting about the volleyball. I even commented to my wife that other than swimming, gymnastics, and track (the big 3) all they show is sand volleyball which isn't particularly compelling in my opinion. The track and field coverage was really lacking in the field events. I enjoy watching the long jump, pole vault, and high jump. And the worst was the ignoring of the U.S. gold medal winner in the decathalon. Thats one of the most exciting events due to the wide of variety of skills necessary, and the fact that the winner is the unofficial "Greatest Athlete in the World".
In addition to this most of the announcers weren't even in Beijing. They were in a studio here in the U.S. watching the events on TV. And if I had to watch one more inane segment from Mary Carillo where she tries to crack stupid jokes to confused Chinese people she's interviewing I was going to shoot myself.
Click to expand...

Are you kidding? Track and field is pretty much ALL they showed once the swimming events were over (as they pretty much didn't start up until after swimming was done). Had you stopped watching by that point?
 
jdoggivjc said:
Are you kidding? Track and field is pretty much ALL they showed once the swimming events were over (as they pretty much didn't start up until after swimming was done). Had you stopped watching by that point?
Click to expand...

Which field events did they show? They only showed highlights.
 
CloneFan65 said:
I thought the coverage was awful. That's interesting about the volleyball. I even commented to my wife that other than swimming, gymnastics, and track (the big 3) all they show is sand volleyball which isn't particularly compelling in my opinion. The track and field coverage was really lacking in the field events. I enjoy watching the long jump, pole vault, and high jump. And the worst was the ignoring of the U.S. gold medal winner in the decathalon.
Click to expand...


ITA - I didn't see your comments before I started another thread about the poor coverage of field events. High Jump, Pole Vault, Discus & Jav + Decath are traditional Olympic events and need better coverage.
 
Unfortunately most people don't care about field events, and they can be boring because of the wait time in between them. IMO Field events are best consumed as highlights when there are other events with more continous action. I love the volleyball though and I thought it was compelling.

It's a matter of preference really. NBC paid a crapton for the rights so they get to show what they want to and I thought they did a great job, but I really don't care about high jump and shot put.
 
jdoggivjc said:
Are you kidding? Track and field is pretty much ALL they showed once the swimming events were over (as they pretty much didn't start up until after swimming was done). Had you stopped watching by that point?
Click to expand...

I disagree; it seems to me, they pretty much showed Track, not Field.
 
CloneFan65 said:
Which field events did they show? They only showed highlights.
Click to expand...

Well, considering all those events pretty much took place during the day over there, if you felt like staying up past midnight Central time, then yeah, you got to watch them live. It's not as if Beijing isn't 12 hours ahead of us or something.

Seriously - sometimes I think people will ***** about anything they can dream up just because they have a constitutional right to do so. Ohmygawd - NBC didn't show enough track and field events - ARE YOU KIDDING ME???
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Help Support Us

Become a patron
Top Bottom