Official "new lows in Olympics TV coverage" thread
 

So it's annoying enough to have the usual NBC olympics coverage be tape-delayed and massively chopped up in order to play up the "money" events like ice skating/dancing "teen queens on ice" psychodrama, and to even have events rebroadcast out of sequence in order to create fake drama - but what I just saw from NBC in the men's giant slalom really takes the cake.

The setup: going into run 2 of 2, American Ted Ligety had a huge nearly-1-second first-run lead over his nearest competitor. But run 2 start order is based on run 1 times, and the slope was deteriorating fast, so Ligety was facing really fugly snow conditions, which had already cost his fellow run 1 top-timers hopes at a medal. Instead we had 2 French fellows who did great runs somewhat earlier in the run 2 start order sitting within ~0.2 seconds of each other at the top of the provisional 2-run standings. Now the penultimate racer {run 1 2nd-placer behind Ligety) goes, he loses quite some time in the nasty late-day snow conditions, and as he approaches the finish he's around 0.5 sec behind the provisional 2-run leader, the faster of the aforementioned 2 French dudes. What do we hear from the NBC announcers? "If he finishes within a half-second he *will* be on the podium..." Uh no, unless Ligety were to blow sky-high in his run 2 and you already knew that, meaning you were doing the announcing after the fact and dubbing it over the original soundtrack. Or - as it actually turned out - Ligety lost most of his run 1 lead in run 2 but still came in 1st by 0.48 seconds, meaning that relative to Ligety's final time, a half-second would indeed have placed the run 2 penultimate skier on the podium in 3rd place. Which again reveals the NBC commentary as an after-the-fact overdub job. Seriously, guys - you can't even have your folks do live commentary and keep that for the tape-delay rebroadcast? Morons.

Ah well, thus endeth the rant - time to watch a couple more long-in-the-tooth late-teen ice drama queens mug for the judges - LOL, I just un-muted the sound and the first thing I heard was the lady announcer of the blather tag team say something about landing a jump being harder if it coincides with a musical crescendo. Right - because the skaters haven't heard the accompanying muzak a million and six times before in practice. The stupid is really strong in these folks. :)

Clearly I'm way too un-drunk ... [glug lug, glug] ... ah, that'th better. Now, where wath I - ah yeth,
now, let'th lithen to American teen thkating thenthation Grathie Gold opine on "mental toughneth..." as she recounts the time she went three roundth with a prime Mike Tython...

Here in Denmark and Sweden if you subscribe to the channels covering the olympics on the web for ~$20 (Denmark) or ~ $40 (Sweden) for a month you can stream everything live and even 4 events at the same time picture-in-picture on the swedish channel.

You can then also watch the full unedited event at any time later. But the problem is it is very hard to watch an event later, if you don't want the results spoiled because to get to the saved streams you have to go through the news page with all the breaking news.

I get all my [URL="http://www.theonion.com/articles/15yearold-figure-skating-sensation-no-match-for-za,35296/"]Olympic coverage online.[/URL]


[URL="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/520257-15-year-old-figure-skating-sensation-no-match-for-zamboni-is-satire-some-say-it-went-too-far/"]of course some people need to relax and drink a few more cold ones...[/URL]

[QUOTE=ATH;367408]Here in Denmark and Sweden if you subscribe to the channels covering the olympics on the web for ~$20 (Denmark) or ~ $40 (Sweden) for a month you can stream everything live and even 4 events at the same time picture-in-picture on the swedish channel.[/QUOTE]

LOL... Here in Barbados things are quite different...

[URL="http://www.cbc.bb/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=257"]Every channel provided by the local television supplier freezes whenever Olympic cover is about to start[/URL].

Not a problem for me; I rarely watch television, and don't really care about sports. But it pisses SHMBO off to no end.... (Never good to have an annoyed SHMBO!)

[QUOTE=chalsall;367456][URL="http://www.cbc.bb/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=257"]Every channel provided by the local television supplier freezes whenever Olympic cover is about to start[/URL].[/QUOTE]The language in that PDF is misleading: "... transmission of the games is strictly prohibited on all channels except ...". What is should say, if it wants to be more accurate, is: "... transmission of the games is not authorised by us on any channels except ...".

Also one wonders how they are "blacking out" the other channels?

In Canada, things are going quite smoothly. Every quarter of an hour or so there's a little blurb at the top right of the screen showing what each channel is currently broadcasting. It's a bit annoying to miss 75% of the eighth end of a big curling match because we need our updates on the 1,723rd imaginable variant of a skiing event while that very event is being broadcast on another channel, live, that we aren't watching because we want to watch the damn curling instead. Other then that, though, quite good.

I've given up on not hearing the results and so I'm not all that interested in recording any of the events for later. Just yesterday, in fact, the results for the gold medal women's hockey game was revealed to me by one guy who claims to not like sports, talking to two other guys who claim to not like sports, and me. "Oh it looks like the women got the gold in overtime." Thanks, bud.

I haven't been watching the "re-runs" very much but by what I've seen, they're either very obvious recaps or actual re-runs. I'll give our government subsidized broadcast stations that much credit.


On the other hand, a good candidate for this thread is the opening ceremony. When one of the rings didn't open, the Russian broadcast was switched to a rehearsal in which the ring did properly open.

Anyone who thought Russia would jump at this opportunity to show us how they've changed since the Soviet days can eat their words with tartar sauce. Same propaganda bullshit as always.

[QUOTE=TheMawn;367503]

Anyone who thought Russia would jump at this opportunity to show us how they've changed since the Soviet days can eat their words with tartar sauce. Same propaganda bullshit as always.[/QUOTE]

I just want to point out that this paragraph doesn't say what you think it does. Unless you mean to point out that people's words with tartar sauce are delicious. And true.

Kudos to Russia for silencing the naysayers and hosting a fabulous winter olympics. US MSM seem almost disappointed that the "major terrorist attack" they'd dutifully been threatening almost daily the past month did not materialize. Nice wrap-up piece here:

[url=www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/sports/olympics/olympic-closing-ceremony-proves-russia-a-worthy-host.html?ref=sports]Amid the Triumphs, an Argument for Tolerance[/url]: [i]Olympic Closing Ceremony Proves Russia a Worthy Host[/i]

Our CBC also hyped up the opening ceremony something fierce. "Remember there has been violent riots just under 1000 km away..." as if that distance meant anything. Violence is never a good thing but jeez if there isn't violence within 1000 km of you, you either live smack dab in the middle of North America, the center of the pacific or on the frigging moon.

Vladimir Putin was not going to let anything happen to his Olympic games. Whether terrorists just had enough decency to not destroy the biggest peace-keeping event of human history, or Putin's iron fist held everything together, I am very, very happy to know that the Olympics went down without a problem, at least for the sake of the athletes and their families.

Some questionable judging in the one subjective event. No bad refereeing as far as I watched. Honestly, besides the fact that they happened in Russia, these were some very good games. I just wish they'd pick a country without palm trees.


A good quote (slightly paraphrased, can't remember the exact words) from our newspaper: "A 55-year-old Mexican, 6-time Olympic skier, fiat heir, pop singer, was seen photographing a topless Lebanese skier bathing in the sun after her race. Possibly the craziest thing yet is nothing in that sentence was made up."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;367679]Kudos to Russia for silencing the naysayers and hosting a fabulous winter olympics. US MSM seem almost disappointed that the "major terrorist attack" they'd dutifully been threatening almost daily the past month did not materialize. Nice wrap-up piece here:

[url=www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/sports/olympics/olympic-closing-ceremony-proves-russia-a-worthy-host.html?ref=sports]Amid the Triumphs, an Argument for Tolerance[/url]: [i]Olympic Closing Ceremony Proves Russia a Worthy Host[/i][/QUOTE]The bit I liked about the closing ceremony was the way the dancers failed to make the fifth Olympic ring at first. Very British humour that one.

It's good to see that the Russians can poke fun at themselves. Not many nations appear to be self-confident enough to display that capability.

The closing ceremony reminded us of Russia's abiding love for its writers and poets ... I hope they are similarly appreciative of poetic justice, because (IMO) that characterizes the following story about the rich US hedge-fund douchebag who bought a place for himself and his wife in the Sochi olympics as members of the "Dominican ski team":

[url=sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/a-pair-of-olympics-skiers-representing-dominica-are-having-a-nightmare-week-in-sochi-020645963.html]A husband-and-wife pair of Olympic skiers representing Dominica are having a nightmare week in Sochi[/url]

She got a broken nose, he crapped himself - erm, I mean "fell prey to a vicious bout of stomach flu". I feel almost as sorry for them as I do for the "Google Glasshole walks into a SF bar" lady I just posted about in the Lounge "Hmmm..." thread.