I have been dedicating myself to some serious Olympic TV-watching – never forgetting that it’s a marathon not a sprint. I got my thumb in training in July. The callous has worn off andI can switch between NBC-HD and Universal HD then down to USA over to MSNBC effortllessly. I even sneak in Oxygen for a bit of equestrian. I am covering a lot of ground. I am putting in the hours, Oh! Yes.
But I have a beef. No sailing! No siree Bob!
Wall-to-wall Michael Phelps. OK that relay was amazing but I don’t need to watch prime time interviews with his mum, bless her.
I have had enough of 11 year old Chinese girl gymnasts. I don’t need to see any more Kazakhstanis pummeling the crap out of Albanians in boxing. Enough already with the badminton. A little synchronized diving goes a very long way. Weightlifting, Water Polo, Field Hockey, Equestrianism and Rowing are all good in small doses. Softball – pu-lease. Women’s beach volleyball? OK more of that.
So far I haven’t seen a frickin’ picosecond from Qingdao. No Ynglings. No Anna and her Radial. 470s? Ha! The words “Zach Railey” have not been uttered by Bob Costas to my knowledge. Show me a 49’er.
Come on NBC show me some bloody sailing. OK, it’s only the prelims, the winds are light but you have 3600 hours of Olympics to air and you had better give us some Qingdao action.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
SAILING
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
NOW
It’s all at http://www.nbcolympics.com/sailing/video/index.html?forcereload=true.
According to the television schedules that I’ve seen, which were either produced by NBC of based on information provided by NBC, there is no plan to provide any coverage whatsoever of the Olympic sailing. That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Maybe it’s because Qingdao is so darn far from Beijing that the network powers-that-be decided sending somebody that far wasn’t worth it. And maybe it’s because NBC doesn’t believe the American public is all that interested in sailing.
It’s hopeless. Perhaps if it was windier there would be motivation to produce some sort of one-minute highlight package. A 49er gybe mark in 15 knots would seem to provide at least as much exciting footage as watching two people falling off a 3-story building at the same time and in the same manner, but in 6 knots of breeze it’s probably more boring than rowing.
I did see Costas ask one of the swimming commentators to put Phelps’ performance in perspective for the average American who says, “Well, no one was defending against him or hitting him or throwing balls at 90 miles an hour at him.” The swimming commentator tried to explain that just swimming 200 meters is hard enough for most people…imagine Gary Jobson trying to explain sailing to the average American who thinks like Costas.
I had the same type of problem with the winter Olympics back in the day of VCR’s. I had scheduled the VCR to record some men’s slalom skiing, and the network preempted it for some sort of pairs ice dancing that wasn’t on the schedule and wasn’t a medal performance anyway.
NBC is one of the best channel in the world, I would like to get a job there because I am studying to be a journalist !