August 14, 2004

Olympic Bitching

Well, the Olympics have barely started and world class complainers are already at it.

I admit to near hating the coverage of the past two Olympics. But early on I have no complaints at all about this one.

First, if I had not been at work this morning I could have watched the opening ceremonies live on CBUT. Since I wasn't I watched large chunks on NBC/CBUT tonight. The two networks were enough out of synch with each other that if we missed something on CBUT we could switch over to NBC a bit later and see it. I thought the ceremonies were fine. Excellent music, fine artistry, great graphics and lots of athletes. It was just fine.

Second, I'm now watching live rowing. Hey, I've been watching live rowing for 1.5 hours now. This is more live rowing then, I think, have been shown in the last two Olympics combined. The announcers have been ok, if a bit slow keeping up with the action on the course. Oh, there has not been a single long human interest story yet.

If to today turns out to be exemplary of the rest of the coverage I'm going to be very unhappy about being on a traveling vacation over the next week instead glued to the TV. I will, though, enjoy the vacation.

PS: Yea, I agree with Tim Duncan's assessment of the NBC announcers. But, hey, we just went to other coverage when they got too misdirected.

Posted by Steve on August 14, 2004
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