30 min of DH on NBC. WARNING Spoiler for Women's DH

yup, another thumbs down here for nbc.  They bought the olympics not so much for them to show them as to prevent anyone else from doing so.  And thank goodness for all those news breaks so we don't forget what is going on in the world....that we could'nt find out somewhere else.

How many runs did they actually show?  Was it 7 or 8?  What a joke.  Then they get burned later in the evening with the ice at the speedskating oval so they have time to fill after they have already shown us the results. 

Can you imagine what they might have aired if the event had been postponed to a night when women's figure skating had been on the program? 

Lame coverage or lame weather? I'd lighten up on NBC given all the weather related changes. Sure, I'd love to see more downhill but there's a lot more going on than just skiing. More delays today!! This can't be good for future of Whister/Blackcombe for racing or recreational skiing.

 I've been putting the Olympics on the DVR.  The other night I watched 2+ hours of coverage in under 30 minutes.  How many commercial breaks are there per hour?  A dozen?  Sure seems like it.

I agree, the DH coverage was lame.  I'm hoping Lindsey and company get more airtime.  Although in NBC's defense, I think they got burned in Torino with the DH coverage because Bode didn't even come close to delivering a good performance.  

There's always the Combined for more DH coverage too.

Its not really the "amount".  Its more that they only are showing highlights of the events, and even that is broken up with "feel-good" stories and interviews.  Its Olympic Coverage for those with ADD...

It was a totally disappointment. I think that the polar bears got more air time :( After watching Universal Sports all WC season - I was hoping NBC would realize that they have a ready made, educated audience. If they arent going to show stuff live - atleast show it! And not just the favorites and medal runs ... lots to be learned by watching the folks that didnt win. Anyone else remember when you actually got to hear other countries anthems/see their flags during the olympics?

Horrendous coverage, probably the worst of any Olympics I can remember. They cut out so many racers, with no explanation to the general public that it skews the entire view of the race. It's as if 8 guys raced. (it might have been six. Upshot: almost none) There's no drama at all. Usually they show all the Americans but not even that today.  They showed no Austrians. I think they showed the Canadian Robbie Dixon because he's Canadian and because he crashed.
  I suppose a lot of it stems from the postponement, but it was disgraceful. Vice President Biden commented at opening that he wanted to see the downhill and the giant slalom but doubted he'd have the time. I hope he complains about the horrible coverage.

For people who actually want to watch this stuff, why can't they just let us see it somehow else? Tim Ryan is a pretty good announcer in general, but if you cut everything out there's nothing to announce.

Rating: 

You can actually watch a lot of the runs by going to the results page
http://www.nbcolympics.com/alpine-skiing/resultsandschedules/event=ASM010000/phase=ASM010101/doc=results.html
Then click on the camera symbol.

The polar bears! Yes. I mean that was a nice segment, but we're tuning in to watch the freakin' Olympics. Show segments like that when there's nothing going on - which is never. Show it some other time in the year. What did that have to do with the Olympics???
Why not take the time to educate kids about the sports they're watching.

All they do is talk about damn medal counts. There's never a mention of Bode without talking about 2006.  He was "shut out" last time blah blah. Ohno gets a silver in short track -by luck almost since the Koreans crashed at last turn, and they act like it's a gold. Bode gets a bronze, missing by .02 secs the silver and it's not much.

30 minutes is a generous estimate, and includes commercials and interviews.  They showed slightly over 11 minutes of skiing, featuring six skiers (by bib number):

#4 Steven Nyman
#8 Bode Miller
#16 Aksel Lund Svindal
#18 Didier Defago
#22 Didier Cuche
#23 Robbie Dixon

The final racer, Dixon, crashed out of the race a little more than halfway down the course.  So what did the "average viewer" learn:

1. One member of Team USA is fast.
2. Norway has a racer who "overcame great odds" to win a silver medal.
3. There are two guys named Didier on the Swiss team, and one of them has a broken thumb.
4. Canadian skiers fall.

All of this skiing coverage had four commercial breaks during its run.  Really, NBC?   Four breaks are necessary?  The viewers' minds need to recover that much after every run?  Or did your editors need to insert the old text game (think Zork) trick of "WAIT > TIME PASSES?"

Pathetic.  Idiotic - especially for the "showcase event" of alpine skiing.

The polar bears got almost 10 minutes of coverage during Mary Carillo's fluff piece - only one minute less than the skiers.

I've been going after NBC on my blog, by the way.  Read the posts here and here.

I was totally geared up for this too... I've been ramped up for the olympics for a few weeks now, excited after watching Universal's coverage at Kitzbuhel -- this was an absolute joke.

They showed their commercial for

I don't think i'm going to waste much more of my time watching that commercial for the dragon snowboarding viking movie... sorry you lost my viewership NBC.

The only way to watch that broadcast is to DVR it and then either start watching an hour late until you catch up or watch it the next day.  At last that way, you're sticking it to the network by not watching the commercials.

A couple nights ago, the broadcast started at 7:00 and I started watching the DVR at 7:30.  I skipped commercials and non-sports-related talk.  By 8:30 I was caught up to the real time broadcast.  I watched 1.5 hours of broadcast in 1.0 hours.  That means the a full 1/3 of the broadcast is either commercials or meaningless blather.

-l2t

The public is also learning that Lindsey's shin is bruised. It's a joke. They never supply any context at all for anything. Do they convey that one can actually be killed skiing that, that it's not something that even an "expert skier" has a prayer of doing?

They need to give more time to correspondents like Picabo who can actually explain something. Of course there's no time to begin with - we're talking about Polar Bears and showing some stupid dreamworks movie that has nothing to do with the Olympics or sports for that matter.
Oh wait, they showed the Alpine team mountain biking in the desert the other day.

Without question the worst coverage ever. Its not the weather and its not the postponement. Its the refusal, incompetence or inability to produce the DH event with any drama or scale whatsoever.

Embarrassing. Think about if that had happened in a year with franz klammer or bill johnson, great Olympic moments would have been missed and under appreciated by all- even non skiers.

Well, I too would like to have seen more of the DH.

but..

Notice that Snowboarding received a large amount of coverage and DH did not. The younger crowd wants to see freestyle and snowboarding. Boardercross, Skicross and especially boarding halfpipe will get a lot of air time and halfpipe will be a main event.  

This simply reinforces what I have been saying on this subject before. It is something I think most people here refuse to admit -- Classic, Austrian-style ski racing is not a large draw in the US. Very few people are interested in watching it. Even fewer care in any way about the sport.  It lacks the 'cool factor' for the younger generation and most older people who watch the downhill just want to see the crashes or mishaps. If it wasn't for Lindsey Vonn, the events would all but be ignored by the US public, except for their contribution to the medal counts. These are harsh words for us ski buffs, but this is the reality .

a major disappointment for sure

and the online universalsports video bank is having all video come up "This video is not loading properly", so viewing there is not possible.
Interesting their attempt to add some "Canadian' Flavor to their coverage seems to be spotty at best. Looking at result, Guay placed 5th! A great finish, considering how tight the placings were. Yet, he doesn't qualify as a Canadian even worth mentioning ??? WTF?
I feel bad for the the Vancouver organizers and Canada for the less than half-assed job NBC is doing. Thye deserve much better than that.
I mean, somehow they are finding enough broadcast time to show a great expanse of curling (YOO HOO!  not...  ) on CNBC and on USA networks. Now, I have nothing against curling, but there can't possibly be a sport with a smaller audience than curling...
We can expect this entire week to have this curling coverage - oh joy
Sadly, prolly the only reason they showed more of the luge was the hope of another accident.
Some how they didn;t ruin all the events. By some miracle both the Women's 10K and Men's 15K XC events had great coverage. ...someone mustta fallen asleep in the broadcast van and let it run... and the mens and womens moguls and snowboardcross got good coverage.

Thankully I can DVR and so 4 hours becomes barely an hour of something worthwhile.

remember that the average viewer is not like most of us. most are just "lite" viewers. "wee- look at the snowboarders fly"  "is that red-headed guy on yet?"  "what do you call the flippy, jump thing?"  "Where do I buy that neat looking scarf matt lauer was wearing?"  

Tog!! Thanks for the link.  I was searching for that all over the web and lo and behold here it was on Epic.

Now I can watch the Olympics.  I still give NBC a thumbs down for not providing this link.  Thumbs up to Epic!!

http://www.nbcolympics.com/alpine-skiing/resultsandschedules/event=ASM010000/phase=ASM010101/doc=results.html

But they didnt even show any of the qualifying heats for the boardercross.  And they only showed 3 of the quarter-final runs. 

Like I said...just showing highlights for the ADD generation.  Pathetic...

Wonder if they would have broadcast women's ski jumping?  Naw, NBC is saving up the air time for exciting stuff like ice dancing and curling.

Quote: This is 90% NBC's own problem. They build individuals up to absurd levels as if it's not a competition, that you just have to show up to win.Besides being difficult races they're in a natural environment and lots of things can happen.  What they don't get is that if they emphasized the competition it would actually be much more interesting. People would get into it given some time.
Look at the Biathlon. A snow squall came in and many of the racers then had no chance of wining anything.

i blame the weather. its not really NBC's fault in this case, they had other events programmed to show, and had to squeeze the DH in somewhere with everything they already planned to show before the DH got delayed. i'm sure they had much better coverage planned for the DH had it not been delayed. I don't think NBC can be blamed for this one. hopefully the skiing events stopped getting postponed and we can see full coverage of the events.

The DH coverage on NBC makes the WC coverage on versus look emy winning.

Agreed.  Universal sports is where to see whole events.  Same company. 
They have been sucking for years now.  Too much BS, not enough coverage of events.

Edited by comprex - 2/16/10 at 1:17pm

Anyone else tired of the disney animation promo for their upcoming movie they keep showing? 

Jives well enough with:

Marco Sullivan crashed on the second to last jump at about 1:48

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=c26f0e97-69ec-4df9-ba2b-2caf81384007.html#m+downhill+sullivan+usa

Oh ya... Its annoying but its fitting with their target audience it seems. 

Great post, very much agree with everything you said. I was about to throw a ski boot through the TV after it ended in disgust.

There is additional coverage for many events on MSNBC and USA if you can tune in or DVR them while they are happening live.