30 min of DH on NBC. WARNING Spoiler for Women's DH - Page 2

Thanks for the links..
AT&T U-verse also has a multiview feature so you can monitor NBC, MSNBC, and USA simultaneously (The U-verse is awesome)
I'm very disappointed in the coverage. I'm a former swimmer and I feel that competitive swimming is far more obscure than skiing but swimming gets great coverage during the Olympics. Not fair....
I have very vivid memories of Olympic DH in the 70s. My vivid memory from this year is spending most of the day watching and still missing about half the DH (got up to go to the BR).
The solution is to be a squeaky wheel, en masse....
Oh, in addition to focusing on comments a 28 y/o Bode made in 2006, the fact Lindsey Jacobellis made a edge grab and wiped out in 2006 is being beaten to death, as well

To make matters worse, NBC more or less told us who won during the coverage, talking about "Bode Miller, the Swiss contingent and the mighty Norweigen" or something along those lines. But we did get to see cute polar bears and a few hours of ice dancing. NBC sucks ass.

They haven't made enough noise about Nate Holland and his pants comments though imho! Maybe he wiped out in boarder cross because his pants were too tight, or not tight enough. They looked pretty tight to me, just camoflaged as old jeans.
Nate's pants thing:
"Nate Holland thinks your pants are too tight?"
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Nate-Holland-thinks-your-pants-are-too-tight?urn=oly,219715

Actually, Lindsey Jacobellis and Nate Holland are related here. Snowboarding grew up into a competion when she wiped out. - She'd get no points for style but threw a trick and it cost her. Nate will get no points for style either but he hasn't figured that out yet?
Or, will snowboarder cross make baggy pants part of the uniform? That's tough when speed wins and baggy is slow.

no way that's true; it's even more unfathomable. hours of biathalon. you're telling me the market demands more biathalon. half hour and less for downhill. It's beyond comprehension. for as long as I live I will dodge anything NBC if possible, as news and programs. adios, idiots.

Postponements are no excuse; they had the film in the can. people wouldn't want to see Marco crash. nah.

nothing to do with reality.

 Short and sweet! It was over by nine, so I didn't have to stay up late.

I don't really agree with this.  Bode came in FIFTH in the Torino DH.  FIFTH!  He missed the bronze by 0.11 seconds.

Antoine Deneriaz put the hammer down and deserved to win, but come on.  He didn't even come close to a good performance?

I could understand if it was the downhill segment of the combined, but the mens downhill was absolutely raped by NBC, a complete joke for the premier alpine event.

I am DVRing everything, or watching it live at nbcolympics.com , I saw more DH training runs than OTA mens DH on NBC...friggin ridiculous.

I got this:

"Competition video from the 2010 Winter Olympics is restricted to viewers within the United States video from the 2010 Winter Olympics is restricted to viewers within the United States!"


Oh well, better than a humiliating full body search and a declaration to renounce all my rights.

Has anyone e-mail this thread to NBC?

It was 6.

 There was a lot of talk of the shitty coverage of the DH in the Ski school locker room this morning.  I missed it, but have it on DVR.  It was on the computers in the supervisors area this morning.  6 runs covered...  REALLY!!  I saw curling on the TV all day long everywhere I went today.  I'm sorry that the polar bears are getting screwed.  The polar bears will keep getting screwed because they have no money and no oil.  The feel good segments are basically useless and that makes me sad.  Where is my DH coverage?  How much skating will I have to endure?  Who are the geniuses that make the programing decisions?  Lots of commercials and human interest segments...  very little actual coverage.  I have over 100 channels on my expensive cable service.  Can't a few of them get the job done?  NBC sucks ass!     

What's wrong with curling?? It's got stuff to it...
Bizarely, I actually like watching curling. But not at the expense of Downhill!!! It's the premier event of the Olympics. So they show 6 guys!!

The DH coverage definitely upset me. I think it was a prime example of just how bad NBC has been with every sport though. Where most of us are biased towards skiing here, I still enjoy watching the other sports too and think very much that they have dropped the ball with piss poor coverage that doesn't concentrate on the sport.
 
I have been even more dissapointed with the blocked realtime viewing though.  I happened to have Monday off work, I made sure to be done with errands in time to watch the DH, only to discover that it wasn't available over the air or online. I got to find out what the results were, but had to wait to watch it until "prime time", they wouldn't play it real time online. They should at least let us watch it real time online, completely blocking the sport and making us wait is just plain annoying.

As many have said, I think this is definitely even more of a dissapointment since I've grown used to the great coverage I've been getting on Universal Sports over the air.

Wish CBC still had coverage rights, they always were pretty fair and showed the majority of the sport.

Was the truncated downhill coverage perhaps due to the original delay (it was supposed to be on Saturday)? The delay may have messed with the NBC schedule. Glad that I recorded it so I could skip all of the BS stories and stuff I didn't want to see. We shall see if Women's DH gets more on Wednesday night!

They won't show and discus competition. They have to make it into a story, a fiction really. If they can't figure out a hook, they don't show.

With them only showing 6 full runs in DH I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up for seeing much of GS and I might as well forget about slalom.  Their coverage mens an women's moguls was pretty much a joke as well.30 competitors in qualifying and 20 in finals and I bet they showed the same 8 -10 people for both rounds.  But I did get to fast forward on teh DVR through what must have been more than a hour of boardercross qualifying and what about the hours upon hours of curling that I skipped over on the DVR.

X2; weird ain't it.



Just wondering if anything took place in Vancouver/Whistler yesterday outside of Men's Figure Skating?

Also wondering if the IOC has any standards on 'Costumes', seemed like the comp was more about who's the most flaming. I must admit, I'm more than a little embarrassed to be a U.S. citizen.

One thing I don't miss about living in the States: shameful coverage of ski racing.

Pity me. I had to choose between two channels offering full, live race coverage: free TV (RAI network) and Eurosport. No skipping bib numbers. No tipping winners. Sweet.

On tap tonight: woman's DH. Anyone who wants to stop by, I'll be popping my first beer at about 8 CET.

Must be nice, here in the U.S. we're on the other side of the globe from Canada: Hence the delayed broadcasting and necessary editing.

This pretty much sums it up for me, and you have to respect that it comes from the network that managed to get into the Jay Leno and Conin O'brian mess.

How many people would watch football, if instead of broadcasting a game, they created story-lines around all the games on any given Sunday, and showed that instead?

Baseball could be a touching story line about the catcher's new baby girl, and highlights of his spectacular plays.  No need for the boring game, and finally, we can get rid of the 7th inning stretch.

Basketball is a made for TV drama, and of course an entire Hockey tournament can be boiled down to just a game or two...we should do the same for college football BCS.  

NBC has redefined sports as we know it.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/contactus.html

I just did.

Quote:
Yes. Luging, Biathlon. Boardercross. And uh...Curling!

Your embarrassment is way too late here.
Possibly you were blinded and left unconscious after stumbling across the top program in the U.S. You've since forgotten about the standards to "Dancing with the Stars".
If Bode wants "rehabilitation" in the public eye he could start there. He'd have to do real well though or it could backfire.
Exhibit A to refresh:

Giles Marini and Cheryl Burke - "Dancing With the Stars"
http://www.film.com/features/photos/1/25973401
Does Eurosport offer different languages?
Wow, had we known things would be this bad maybe we could have figured out some way to transmit your coverage over here. That would be something. Sending feeds over to Italy and then back to the US because the US network won't show them.
One longs for the days of early satellite t.v. where you could just take the feed.

MojoMan has a great point.  My 7 year old is really starting to get into skiing.  He loved watching the mogul races and snowboard cross.  He was starting to grow bored with the DH coverage no matter how much I tried to describe how difficult it was or point out things he could learn from.  His grandparents, who aren't skiers, happened to be over and pretty much expressed them same sentiments.  Unless you have a little understanding of hard it is. downhill races don't have a lot of action for non skiers.  Their feeling is once you have seen a couple they pretty much all look the same.   I would love to see more of it but they were ready to move on to something else. 

Unfortunately a large majority of the audience does not participate in winter activities and really just wants to see the "highlights" except for figureskating and some of the snowboard events.  I also think the amount of coverage was greatly impacted by the delays.  All that said, NBC's coverage has been very lackluster and choppy though I am not sure if it is the coverage or the actual events.  It just seems that everyone is going through the motions and I wonder if the Olympics has the same meaing for all involved as it once did, especially for the stars.

You mean 5 and 1/2 runs. They had to show a crash. Absolutely pathetic.

Email NBC and post on their discussion board! They S-U-C-K!

i find skier-cross and boarder-cross to be unwatchable.  i can't figure out why people enjoy that.

i would argue that downhill is compelling and exciting and i generally have no interest in racing.

i was riveted by the 3 runs i got to see...

Apparently you missed the last 3 years of Bret Favre.


Well, if anyone from NBC is reading this (or more importantly, advertisers), I rushed home to watch downhill and planned on being home a few more nights for a full serving of olympic coverage.
Now, that's not happening -- if I happen to be home, and re-runs of something more interesting aren't on, I might tune in.

5 1/2 runs shown on the premier skiing event, the DH .

BOO!

Quote: That is the tough thing about presenting ski races. It is difficult to show it in a way that clearly shows the difficulty of even the terrain. You'd think they'd have this down better by now, but they don't. You rarely get a sense of the steepness of some of the run, and the distance that they're going on the jumps. They need to do a much better job of conveying that visually. That would help for starters.
In the moguls the side view camera that moves down the slope with the skier has added a lot to the presentation and you see how fast they're moving. The other thing about the moguls is you have excited commentary. Mosely really gets into it.

It's difficult to even comment on the skiing broadcast commentary since there was so little shown. However, I think if they put the same effort into it as they do the Figure Skating it could make a big difference. The commentators there are good, work well together, are knowledgeable and enthusiastic. Then they've got Dick Button who comes on later to discuss the whole competition. He's really quite amazing how enthusiastic he gets, and how straightforward his comments are.

Skiing needs more of that type of commentary and talk to generate some interest. NBC has got Picabo on the Today show. She's really good and gets excited, but so far they've hardly used her on the broadcast. Of course, having less than 30 minutes total coverage it's really hard to complain about nothing.
How much negative commentary have you ever heard about Figure Skaters? Except for the Harding-Kerrigan oddity, they pretty much only have great things to say about them. Meanwhile, we get snowsports athletes like Bode and Lindsey Jacobellis trashed for things that happened four years ago, and exceesive coverage of Lindsey Vonn's injury that starts to grate on the general public. We don't even hear about the Europeans except Cuche and his broken thumb.
I remember the last Olympics and the Bobsled runs. Usually they're pretty much of a snoozer, but they managed to have some great commentators who generated real excitement.

So improve visuals and commentary and it could make a real difference.

course the Leno and Conan thing was mostly planned manipulation and a publicity event.

'Redefined' is true for many sports - Football being one. I stopped watching football when a broadcast game couldn;t get thru an entire set of downs without a commerical. And then attending a game, I first wondered why the players were just standing around, aimlessly, instead of running the next down. Realized that it was a broadcast game and they were all waiting for the commercial to finish.
When sports were first being broadcast, the technical part of showing the 'sport' was a primary objective of the network, figuring they would capture more viewers with 'better than being there' viewing.
Now they're into manupulating the audience to max their revenues, which means manipulating the actual event - A LA football - to match their broadcast/revenue plan.
So I stopped watching manipulated sports, like football.
Things will come full circle to where, if you want to see unmanipulated sport events, you'll have to be there, live. Which also means we don't see many great events because we can't be there.

For now the online raw feeds from WC events are great, when they work...
but when they crap up that chance to watch, I'll just jump on the bike and go for a ride, or break out the board and go out for a session or do something...
I'll leave "'Ice' Dancing with the Stars", along with the daytime drama "As the BoardCross Turns", for the TV herd...