NBC Messed Up in Week Two of Olympic Games

I’m not sure how many people noticed, but NBC really messed up during the second week of the Olympics.

For starters most of the events in the second week weren’t live during the primetime here in the States. Track and field was supposed to be the big event during week two, but not being live made this mediocre.

Actually, I’m not sure how many events were live for the lunchtime broadcasts either. 

I know there are scheduling and time issues involved, but that doesn’t explain why they were able to do so many live events during the first week.

Most of the time, I already knew who won the events shown that night, making it less interesting.

NBC didn’t have another Bela Karolyi to provide analysis and enthusiasm for other sports. He undoubtedly made the Olympics and gymnastics fun to watch during the first week.

A lot of the events coverage started late. I want to see the whole match during volleyball or soccer instead of missing almost a whole set.

Something else that bugged me was the coverage of some of the sports.

I know they spread out the coverage around different channels, but some stuff I felt was left out. Sailing finals were last night, and I had to watch them on the Internet.

I’m okay with watching some of the sports on the Internet because they aren’t that popular. I did watch more than just sailing on the net, but most of these events had no useful commentary.

I don’t get to see some of these sports much and I am curious to learn about them. It’s the reason I watched after all.

Sailing isn’t a sport I get to watch very often, and I would have liked to have seen at least some coverage and dedication. I’m not asking for live events or much coverage since it’s not great for ratings, but a little bit would have been nice.

I’ll let fencing slide during the first week because there were bigger events on like swimming and gymnastics.

NBC did use all of its networks to show most of the events, but they still didn’t show some of them like sailing. Some of them weren’t shown at good hours either.

When the second week came around I just simply didn’t feel like looking around the other networks to find out what events, if any, were on, so I just found myself keeping the channel on NBC during the day and night.  

Personally, I’m willing to stay up a little late to watch them, but I am certainly not going to get up early to watch. There is plenty of primetime television NBC could use for six to seven hours each night.

I was shocked that NBC basically showed only the scoreboard and a highlight of softball. USA dominates softball, and I would have liked to see USA beat up on everyone on network TV.

On a smaller note, some of the storylines got redundant and repeated during their primetime broadcasts. It would have been nice to see some different commercials every once in a while too, but I’m letting that slide because I’m sure they had a hard time selling the spots with the Olympics usually having low ratings.

All and all, NBC did do a good job utilizing their networks with the exception of a handy guide to explain what was going on when and where.

The addition of the Internet was very nice, but I don’t see myself using it again in the future unless I can get better commentary.

At least the live coverage won’t be an issue in 2010 because the games will be in Vancouver.

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