NBC suffers an Olympian headache (Dinosaur Media Extinction Alert)

Marketwatch.com ^ | Feb 27, 2006 | Jon Friedman

[abb]

I love the smell of dying dinosaurs in the morning.....

[Petronski]

NBC should be barred (by constitutional amendment if necessary) from televising organized sports. They SUCK.


Hint to NBC: SHOW THE F***ING EVENTS and stuff the "human interest stories" up you collective butt.

[mewzilla]

I thought FOX & friends goofy Olympic coverage was better than NBC's.

[abb]

Ooooh!! That's gonna leave a mark....

[PogySailor]

My problem with their coverage was that every event I wanted to see got dragged out with a bunch of touchy-feely interviews and such. So little time given to the actual event until after 10:00 PM. Most of the major events did not get wrapped up until after 11:00.

[BluH2o]

As it turned out, NBC blew it by heavily promoting a core of American athletes who turned out to be either grossly overrated all along or incapable of matching the high-level performances from their counterparts.

Agree Bodie Miller was way over hyped ... the guys a loser, no question. However, in the over all medal count, as of yesterday, the U.S. was ranked #2. Not bad ...

[sure_fine]

NBC is about News?.... had no idea

[Joe Boucher]

I refuse to watch personal interest story after personal interest story after etc etc etc.
Put on the athletes and let us watch the action. Get the stupids like jim nance off the air. They offer zero.
Pathetic coverage, rather watch reruns of Andy Griffith then listen to katie couric and crew.

[Dustoff45]

This was the first year I had no interest in the Winter Games. Maybe it is a post 911 emotion. Maybe the past disappoint of network coverage. I thought I was not going to even see one minute until this past weekend when I was flipping channel and there was Canada vs. Finland in Curling.

Yes, it must be misunderstood by most of us, but it was fun to watch.

We need multichannel, multi-event coverage for these games.

[camle]

face it - the olympics are an idea who's time is passing. few thought much of them until Hitler made them a source of national machismo in 36.

the last few have been sorta ho-hum. people are losing interest. if the ioc doesn't do something major soon, they will become completely irrelevant.

[Aquinasfan]

Is it safe to come out now? Is the Olympics finally over?

Two weeks without "The Office." I'm having withdrawals.

[DoughtyOne]

I've disliked those human interest clips since they first started them about ten to fifteen years ago.

[babble-on]

you are very right. I think there's three problems, none of which is going to change.

First, there was always something appealing about the fact that Olympians were amateur athletes, and this clearly no longer is the case.

Second, we (the USA) used to be the underdogs, because the Communist bloc countries cheated and used professionals (nominally employed in the "army" but really full-time basketball, hockey, etc., players). Now with everyone involved being openly a professional and presumably most of the ones in strength sports being past or present steroid users, its hard to really care who wins.

Third, there's a proliferation of ridiculous non-Olympic sports being included in the games, which destroys the sense of tradition, and inflates the medal counts with meaningless snowboard jumping "sports" more suited to a circus than an Olympic competition.

[goresalooza]

They really shouldn't let NBC do the games anymore but I realize the Olympics has sold the broadcast rights to NBC up to the 2008 games. NBC is the worst of the worst, I can't stand the politics, Couric is a total loser anyway. And what was with the endless hours of curling? Good grief...I damn near blew off the figure skating some eves because of massing curling marathons. I barely watched any of the two weeks save the figure skating. I remember that Lillehammer and Salt Lake were all about the athletes. What happened, NBC?

[mewzilla]

I remember that Lillehammer and Salt Lake were all about the athletes. What happened, NBC?

In fairness to NBC, they don't make athletes like they used to, either.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

We need multichannel, multi-event coverage for these games.

If they would just give ESPN a cut, they could use one of their networks to show events real-time whenever that happens to be.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

meaningless snowboard jumping "sports" more suited to a circus than an Olympic competition.

I thought the snowboard half pipe brought more life to these games than most other events. The gold winners were predictable, but that won't always be the case.

[goresalooza]

"In fairness to NBC, they don't make athletes like they used to, either."

You know, you make a damn good point...LOL! I don't recall those older ones being so classless and graceless and spoiled.

[mewzilla]

There were many good eggs there. It's just that thanks to NBC, many of the bad ones were given most of the coverage.

[meowmeow]

First, there was always something appealing about the fact that Olympians were amateur athletes, and this clearly no longer is the case.

Second, we (the USA) used to be the underdogs, because the Communist bloc countries cheated and used professionals (nominally employed in the "army" but really full-time basketball, hockey, etc., players). Now with everyone involved being openly a professional and presumably most of the ones in strength sports being past or present steroid users, its hard to really care who wins.

Third, there's a proliferation of ridiculous non-Olympic sports being included in the games, which destroys the sense of tradition, and inflates the medal counts with meaningless snowboard jumping "sports" more suited to a circus than an Olympic competition.

Bingo, Bingo and Bingo.

This is the first time that I have not watched one second of the Winter games. The fourth reason is because NBC's sappy, endless drama-rama and crappy sports broadcasting is totally unbearable.