6th
Trials coverage
Okay, instead of moaning about NBC’s online Olympics coverage before I actually see it and find out whether it’s any good or not, I’m going to complain about something I have seen: their Trials coverage.
The actual event broadcasting isn’t terrible. There are things I’d like see differently:
- I’d like to see more of the field events. I understand that live coverage of field events isn’t super-exciting, in part because there’s a low ratio of action-to-waiting-around. However, it would be great to see, say, a rapid-fire sequence of all of the attempts of the leading athletes. (Baseball coverage has figured this out: more and more, they’re showing a very quick recap of an at-bat by showing all the pitches, giving about 1-2 seconds per pitch.) I’d love to see, say, 30 high jump attempts in 5 minutes. You’re tape-delaying it anyway - hire an assistant editor and have them splice this together.
- I don’t like cutting away from the action in the middle of the long-distance races. The 5000m (e.g.) is exciting; I want to see what happens in between minute 3 and minute 7. I don’t think I’m going to get my wish any time soon on this one, though.
I can live with flaws, though (esp. since the competition has been pretty exciting). What’s killing me, though, is the inconsistent timing of the coverage.
- Thursday and Friday, the track & field coverage was listed at 11pm Eastern time on the USA channel; it was also shown at 11pm Pacific. I’d prefer an earlier time, but I dealt with it.
- Saturday, the coverage was scheduled for 5pm Eastern, so I made sure I was in front of my TV at 5pm Pacific: nothing. What the hell? This time, they showed it at 2pm Pacific, and I missed it. Grrr.
- Today, the coverage was scheduled for 5pm Eastern again. I get in front of the TV at 2pm Pacific, and again, nothing. I recheck and see that they’ve changed the schedule to 7pm Eastern/7pm Pacific. Arrgh.
Similarly, if NBC operates the same way they did in Athens, the actual Olympics themselves will also be a little messed up for the West Coast. Part of their big promotion then was “24-hour coverage” - NBC would always have coverage on at least one of their channels (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and USA were the primary 4). The problem: some of those channels would show events simultaneously on the East and West Coasts, and others would show events 3 hours later on the West Coast. So, for Californians, there were times when you couldn’t see anything, and times when there were two interesting events on at the same time.
