Idiotic Olympic coverage, part 1 million.

[alarimer]

I know everyone always complains about NBC's Olympic coverage but this was just mind-boggling.

And I know everything is time-delayed, but this was just stupid, so if I wanted to know the outcome of the race, I could check. I don't particularly care about it, but I really hate the touch-feely nonsense stories that NBC feels it has to inject. And this one seemed like a crass cross-promotional marketing thing more than anything else.

Why air a lengthy promo about a movie whose subject is only tangentially related to the Olympics? And not the winter Olympics either. It's about the runner, from the book Unbroken. Which is a great book and an amazing story, but only related to the Olympics tangentially, in that the guy (a runner and track start- hello, those are the SUMMER games) missed being in the Olympics because of the war. It is a remarkable story, it's true, but it was like a commercial inserted into the programming. Let me guess that it is a movie made by Universal or some other studio that's part of the Comcast empire.

[TexasTowelie]

1. I was surprised when they let Dick Button promote his new book repeatedly during an interview

that appears online. It was nice to see him provide some analysis on TV with some cutting remarks for the men and for the overall judging system; however, I was beginning to feel like I was watching QVC instead of the Olympics.

[alarimer]

2. I wish PBS could host the Olympics

I watched some of the BBC coverage (don't ask and I won't tell how) this morning and it was refreshing not to see any commercials. They showed the entire bobsled heat. All 28 teams. NBC would have shown the Americans, the Jamaicans, and maybe the top teams, sprinkled liberally with commercials throughout.