i’m much more of a winter olympics person (almost soley due to that crazy sport of short-track speed skating), but it’s still interesting to take in the summer olympics and see all the competition and drama.
more notably, the televised coverage of the olympics this year has actually been really nice and varied. traditionally, they would only show extended coverage of the things that the united states kicked ass in, such as swimming, track and field, and gymnastics (boring, boring, and boring), and then only have sparse and edited highlight coverage of all the other sports to fill time between heats.
last time they tried this big olympic pay-per-view telecast, which claimed to give you access to all the sports, all the time, was very expensive, and which no one bought.
this time they seem to have come to their senses. sure, there’s still the heavy coverage of the main sports on nbc during prime time, but they’re making extended use of their cable affiliates to give you a pretty impressive range of stuff, all being broadcast on msnbc and cnbc. i’ve been able to watch basketball (for what it’s worth to see the u.s. continue to disappoint), volleyball, soccer, tennis, table tennis, handball, field hockey etc.! they even put the really esoteric stuff on bravo, like judo, sailing, shooting, and equestrian, while they’ve put some of the latin american teams on telemundo, showing soccer, boxing, and basketball.
due to the time difference to athens it’s almost all on in the middle of the night and into the morning, but that’s what tivo is for, right?
plus, i found this nifty website that explains most of the crazy sports. like handball, which sort of looks like field hockey, except that they lost their sticks and get beat up a lot.
Posted at August 19, 2004 8:20 PMComments are now closed for this entry. Thank you for playing.