Europeans, Please Help! : The Olympics, NBC and the internet

Would any of our European brothers or sisters here be willing to set up a proxy for us Americans so we can get some decent Olympic coverage via the BBC or others?

"Eezy_Bordone" wrote:

Would any of our European brothers or sisters here be willing to set up a proxy for us Americans so we can get some decent Olympic coverage via the BBC or others?

Seconded.

I''m really upset that some of the coverage that I wanted to see (Tennis, weightlifting, boxing) has been pushed off to MSNBC, USA, Bravo, etc.

Since I dont have cable, it looks like I''m going to miss some of the events I wanted to watch.

Was listening to ESPN Radio while on the way to lunch, and people were jumping all over Dan Patrick for annoncing the results of the Phelps swimming event, since it''s being held over for prime time broadcast. I''m not sure what the solution is, but old-school broadcast media seems to be at odds with instant updates and up-to-the-minute coverage that we are growing accustomed to.

CNBC does a pretty good job. The Canadian''s are obviously as patriotic as anyone, but they seem to be more open to covering the good and bad of everyone, including themselves, unlike the US''s one sided view of things (or so it seems). Plus they are doing almost all the coverage.

Yeah, our coverage here in the US sucks ass. I was so looking forward to watching some of it in HD, only to discover that their HD feed isn''t just the HD version of the normal stuff. No, it''s a day-later 4 hour recap, run in a loop for an entire day. Totally pointless. And they wonder why the ratings for the Olympics have been struggling in recent years...

"Donan" wrote:

CNBC does a pretty good job. The Canadian''s are obviously as patriotic as anyone, but they seem to be more open to covering the good and bad of everyone, including themselves, unlike the US''s one sided view of things (or so it seems). Plus they are doing almost all the coverage.

NBC is very much interested in ""selling the story"" which results in a strange mix of travelogue, human intrest profiles, and some US centric sports coverage.

Overall, they are very much in the NBA style conflict mode-pick the best american in the sport, portray him/her as a principled person battling a bitter (and foreign) rival, rinse, repeat.

It doesn''t help that many people want to watch a certain category of event.
My wife likes the gymnastics. Couldn''t care less about f*cking beach volleyball(WTF?) or even swimming. So, she gets 10-15 minutes of gymnastics, then 20-30 of junk she doesn''t care about. Why? I dunno. Stupid, really. Just stupid. Networks, of all entities, should know by now that they can''t be all things to all people. Pick your ratings winners and run them in blocks. All the gymnastics from Day 1 for a couple of hours straight, then all the swimming, then all the bloody beach volleyball, then all the awe-inspiring paper-boy impersonations, especially since we surely didn''t get enough of that from the Tour de Lance.

I bet they could make a buttload of money by having a special Olympic Coverage Package - say $5-10 for the week, plus the following week as reruns. A channel per event/category. NBCOlympics-Gymnastic Channel, NBCOlympics-Swimming Channel.

I know for a fact that my wife would be more than happy to part with $10 to not have the coverage of the events she likes chopped up with coverage that makes her wander away and check email.

The sports/events selection was why I asked. My wife likes a diverse amount of sports and NBC only covers 1/3 of them and at crappy times of the day.

Radio coverage isn''t a problem (check out Radio 5 on the BBC site), but a live global vid feed for free isn''t something the license fee payer is willing to do over here.

On the BBC Olympic Homepage http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/olym... you can find lots of news, photos and video streams of much of what goes on... updated constantly of course. But you guys probably have that kind of thing coming out of your ears.

You might want to try out http://www.eurosport.com/ too though, they seem to have some streams too.

"duckilama" wrote:

I bet they could make a buttload of money by having a special Olympic Coverage Package - say $5-10 for the week, plus the following week as reruns. A channel per event/category. NBCOlympics-Gymnastic Channel, NBCOlympics-Swimming Channel.

NBC lost about $100 million trying pay-per-view on the 1992 Olympics. The ""Triplecast"" was extremely overpriced, about $100 and up as I recall. NBC doesn''t seem to understand the pricing might have been a tad high for a sporting event of borderline interest to the US, but PPV still gets the blame for the loss. It may be awhile before they are willing to try that again.

"duckilama" wrote:

It doesn''t help that many people want to watch a certain category of event.
My wife likes the gymnastics. Couldn''t care less about f*cking beach volleyball(WTF?) or even swimming. So, she gets 10-15 minutes of gymnastics, then 20-30 of junk she doesn''t care about. Why? I dunno. Stupid, really. Just stupid. Networks, of all entities, should know by now that they can''t be all things to all people. Pick your ratings winners and run them in blocks. All the gymnastics from Day 1 for a couple of hours straight, then all the swimming, then all the bloody beach volleyball, then all the awe-inspiring paper-boy impersonations, especially since we surely didn''t get enough of that from the Tour de Lance.

If they ran them in blocks, then you''d only watch what you want and miss out on all the advertising. Plus, you won''t buy the special commemorative 3 DVD set afterwards since you could just tape it.

Besides, if something happens (like the high winds canning the rowing events), their schedule gets messed.

On a totally unrelated but also European Sport issue.. I saw that Comcast now offers a ""Sports"" Package consisting of 3 channels, Fox Sports, Sky Sports and some other one I can''t recall..

For $5 a month.. the big attraction was that it started with the start of the Premier League and between the channels you get a whole bunch of Premier League games.

I watched Man. City and Fulham play to a 1-1 draw over the weekend.... shame its not a High Def feed though.

The reason I asked for the proxy though is only local UK/Euro''s can stream the live stuff via their ''local'' media outposts just as only americans can get thiers from NBC in the US (after putting in a credit card number).

Slashdot has a story.

but PPV still gets the blame for the loss. It may be awhile before they are willing to try that again.

Maybe, but I''m not talking PPV. I''m talking a limited time channel addition to the basic cable/satellite lineup for $10 for the whole shebang.

If they ran them in blocks, then you''d only watch what you want and miss out on all the advertising.

Also, I don''t mean commercial-free blocks. I mean run all the gymnastics on one channel at one time, not 15 miniutes of gym, 15 of bikes, 15 of underwater basketweaving. Instead of sitting through the commercials, I find my wife wandering away from the TV and checking back periodically or - worse for the advertisers - channel-surfing. And myself, I have absolutely no interest in watching the programming. I might be willing to sit and watch gymnastics with my wife, possibly even asking questions and getting ""invested"" in it, but not when you see a tiny piece of event A, then away to uninteresting event B, followed by this-is-an-olympic-sport-why? event C, then back to event A to find you missed interesting occurence 27 because of the crappy scheduling.

I think I''ll just go play Joint Ops or read Perdido Street Station instead, thanks for nothing NBC. I''d like to be excited or interested, but the format is so bad, it''s more annoying that watching TV (or trying to) while the other person in the room channel-surfs. You''re powerless and end up just divesting yourself from the whole thing. At least I do.

One my newest favorite sites (I''ve been going there daily for about a month now), Engadget, has a nice piece on viewing the Olympics in the 21st century. They have a link to a bunch of ''public proxies'' too.

When I used to watch TV, I always preferred canadian news coverage of Olympics, because they actually feature...the Olympics instead of alot of talking that..is not the Olympics.

Yeah, it''s so bad over here I don''t even bother watching the olympics anymore. Why bother? I think it''s sad that when I was a kid I loved to watch the olympics, despite the fact that I''m not really a sports fan. Back in those days the coverage ran virtually 24 hours a day and followed each event completely. It was great. Now? Can''t stand it, and you can''t tell me my attention span is shorter now than when I was a kid!

I''d actually pay a REASONABLE price for PPV access to the olympics. $100 is not reasonable, even for a weeks worth of coverage. I might pay $40 though, if it mean having multiple feeds and full coverage of events, 24 hours a day.