Quote:
Originally Posted by flere-imsaho
Winter Games > Summer Games
The thing that kills it for me is the style of the U.S. TV coverage. When I lived in the UK, I really enjoyed the BBC coverage, because they would actually, you know, show the competition.
The BBC would flit from one event to another, each with their own play-by-play and color commentator (usually a former competitor) and they'd show a ton of the events. Even stuff like badminton which you never see on U.S. networks. You got a really good feel for the various sports and it was kept interesting.
Compare this to NBC et. al., who it seems spends 50% or more of each hour with some sappy "human interest" story, almost solely focusing on a U.S. athlete, and then shoehorn in some events, almost always the "marquee" events. Completely uninteresting.
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To be fair, the NBC coverage you're discussing is mostly found on the prime-time coverage each evening on the NBC network. They have several other channels that have coverage that is much more event oriented. For example, the HD Soccer and HD Basketball channels are just one game after another. The Universal HD channel has a lot of great events planned with minimal storytelling. As long as you steer clear of NBC in prime time, you should be pretty happy with the coverage. That evening coverage is catered to women, hence the stories to help the viewer be emotionally involved in the event.