In defense of NBC, I think it is damn near impossible to attract large television audiences here in the U.S. when you are covering Olympic events so far from here. Italy is six hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone, which meant that television coverage would have to include: 1) live events televised in the middle of the day on the East Coast and in the morning on the West Coast; and/or 2) events broadcast on tape delay during prime time, with the results already known by most people in today's media-saturated market.
I don't think this kind of event can be covered well on television, no matter how hard a network tries.