If Olympics Coverage Were A Sport
22/08/2008 06:45
. . . We'd give
Canada the gold; would NBC even
medal?Guest author Philip Michaels lives in the Bay Area, but this week he is in Canada and files this report to TV Barn on watching the CBC's Olympic Games coverage.
Until I arrived in Vancouver this past weekend, I thought the Olympics had been pared down to four sports. Whenever I turned on NBC's prime time coverage, I would either see swimming (which I love), gymnastics (which I detest), beach volleyball (which I feign having little interest in so that I may preserve domestic tranquility), and synchronized diving (which I am surprised to discover is a competitive sport). And that was that -- unless enduring one of Cris Collinsworth's grin-filled, content-free personality profiles has been elevated to an Olympic-level sport. If it has, I ain't medaling, that's for sure.
Yeah, yeah, I know: There's plenty of coverage elsewhere on what have been imperialistically dubbed The Networks on NBC. You've got coverage on MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Telemundo, and -- if you hate sport -- Oxygen. But unless you've got 24 hours of free time each day and a color-coordinated spreadsheet outlining exactly what's on when, you're pretty much dependent on what NBC's showing between eight and midnight. And that, for the most part, has been four sports, some of which may not have involved Michael Phelps.
Now, in just the past day or so up in Canada, I've flipped on CBC's coverage and seen, in no particular order: rowing, synchronized swimming, triathalon, track, trampoline, gymnastics, diving, baseball, softball, and beach volleyball. Admittedly some of these sports, I'm not particularly interested in. But I feel like I'm getting a better flavor of the entire Beijing games instead of the handful of sports NBC deems worthy of prime time coverage.
How else is CBC's coverage superior to what NBC has stuck on the air? Let me count the ways.
Details here.
SINC SAYS:
Well OK. I guess the CBC is good for one thing. Couldn’t tell by me though. I don’t watch the games, now or ever before. They just don’t interest me.
